Why You Need To Use Caution When Peeling The Stickers Off Of Fruit
There has been a lot of furor over the stickers that come on fruits — are they edible? Technically yes (it won't kill you to eat one, but don't make a habit of it). Are they biodegradable? Not yet, but hey, scientists are working on that. But they should be removed and thrown away at some point before eating that piece of fruit, and when you peel them off, you might exercise a bit of caution while doing it.
The reason you should be careful when removing the stickers off fruit is because an unintentional puncture wound through the skin, or accidental dropping and bruising of the skin, can speed up the spoilage process. While punctured or bruised fruit is absolutely still edible (an apple cutter like this one from OXO makes it easy to just toss the offending bit), it does make the fruit more susceptible to early molding, as bacteria can access the flesh through the lack of peel or thinner peel, and end up with the perfect atmosphere in which to spread. For fruits where you can eat the peel and the flesh, that's just double sad.
Other ways you could be making your fruit spoil faster
Puncturing or bruising the skin while attempting to peel off the sticker isn't the only way you might be bringing rotten fruit upon yourself. Did you know that you shouldn't be washing your produce as soon as you bring it home? Counterintuitively, washing it puts moisture on the fruit's surface, which promotes bacterial growth; if you're going to give your fruit a rinse, do it right before you eat it.
Many people also love a good fruit bowl for convenience (it's a lot easier to get your daily intake if it's right there on the counter) and for aesthetics. But when you put too many ethylene gas-producing bananas and avocados — yes, they're fruit! — together, they're actually signaling to each other that it's time to ripen, causing them to hit their peak and then start to quickly go bad. If you have the opposite problem with your avocados, learn which fruit you need to accompany them so they ripen up faster, though (hint) you won't need to worry about the sticker here.