LAYING IN SUPPLIES for my friend Sigi's going-away party, I lugged home about 10 more pounds of Granny Smith apples than I needed for my strudel. Departures make me anxious. Now I'm steadily consuming the remaining apples along with a baton of Yevreyskaya Kolbasa (Jewish salami) purchased at European Food Wholesale on Clement and 31st Ave. – a destination worth marking for lovers of smoked meat and fish products.

A diet of apples was bound to awaken my very strong but generally unexpressed dislike of the little sticky labels on fruit. Ever wonder about those? They're a fairly recent phenomenon. Their steady ascendance to the current near ubiquity began in the early 1990s.

Stickers on apples aren't so tricky, maybe because apples are often coated with carnauba or shellac (slippery coatings that make them look pretty and seal in moisture) and the labels come off easily. Nectarines and ripe pears and peaches are a different matter. Taking off the sticker usually results in ripping off the underlying patch of fruit skin, exposing its unprotected flesh to the elements. One professional cook's blog I came across devoted a rant to the rise in labor costs resulting from the dexterity required to remove the stickers without damaging the fruit. A post in response: "There is a special place in Hell for the person that invented them." My sentiments exactly.

Isn't it enough that most produce is coated and sprayed and bred to withstand transworld transportation and have a "maximum shelf life"? Why take one of the perfect manifestations of the universe – a piece of fruit – and ruin it with an inescapable, visual reminder of industrialization? In the name of convenient commerce, of course.

A friendly though laconic information specialist of the Produce Marketing Association informed me these PLU (product/price look-up) stickers were introduced by the PMA – an industry trade group – in 1988. They serve to track the popularity of fruit varieties by monitoring consumer habits, they promote "brand loyalty" (apparently some people judge a fruit by its sticker), and they speed the supermarket check-out experience. The PLU code on the sticker eliminates the checker's having to identify the produce to charge correctly for it. (A geriatric caseworker I know pointed out that actually learning the PLUs would provide checkers some useful anti-Alzheimer's cognitive stimulus. It's never too early to use your brain.)

Each fruit variety has a corresponding four-digit PLU code. For example, 3035 is a Large, Global, White-Fleshed Nectarine, whereas a Small is 4188; check out www.plucodes.com for more. A prefix of 9 indicates organic produce, and an 8, genetically engineered – though as it's not common knowledge, this coding isn't useful for most consumers. The sticker often includes the fruit's place of origin. Some even have URLs.

Turns out, to my dismay, that a certain population finds the stickers themselves addictive: collectors. Known as "P-seals," these stickers inspire passion similar to that engendered by stamps. I guess this is evidence of human adaptability; this is "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I can't deny that some stickers on collectors' Web sites are quite pretty, depicting tropical scenes in miniature or friendly, smiling fruit. But I've never seen such on actual fruit. Which isn't even the point. I don't want any sticky picture on my fruit, thank you very much. I want juicy, ripe, fragrant, breathtaking all-biodegradable fruit.

Produce stickers are not biodegradable. They're problematic for large-scale fruit composting and for using fruit in animal feed. What's worse, many if not most stickers are made of vinyl, a material Greenpeace calls "the worst plastic." Not just nonbiodegradable and indigestible, these stickers are potentially toxic. Vinyl is a major source of dioxin fallout in the environment. Dioxin is nasty. See the movie Blue Vinyl. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish you were still ignorant.

Maybe that's the worst indictment I can provide against produce stickers, if only because Mrs. Wexler was too busy complaining about her divorce to actually teach chemistry in 10th grade summer school. I tried to learn about the adhesives that are used to stick to the fruit. The only substance I recognized on the Food and Drug Administration's list of food-grade adhesives for use on raw produce was polystyrene, and that's because of the X-Ray Spex. Other approved adhesive substances: "Polyethylene, oxidized; complying with the identity prescribed in Sec. 177.1620(a) of this chapter ... BHA. BHT ... Chlorinated natural rubber. Petrolatum ..." and many, many more. Perhaps all perfectly innocuous, but why not abolish the stickers and make it a moot point?

With a heavy sigh, I admit the stickers are likely not going anywhere, at least not until we've got the technology to scan the genetic makeup of a piece of fruit instead. We can lobby big produce retailers and the Produce Marketing Association to, at least, not use vinyl; we can avoid stickers by buying directly from the grower at farmers' markets. Still, I long for one less reminder that most fruit is an industrial product, bred for uniformity and eye appeal. Because I remember the time before they stuck stickers on fruit – when fruit was that much closer to its natural state when it reached me – I long for fruit stickers to just disappear.