Being boiled in hot water, 'bleeding' apple shocked netizens to find reason online

Will apples "bleed"?

Recently, a woman in Zhejiang Province, China, was shocked by the little blood-like beads on apple peel after immersing the apple in boiling water.

She immediately took pictures and asked for help on the Internet, causing worries about apples being stained by unscrupulous merchants. 

However, this is in fact a normal and an explicable phenomenon!

From the photos posted by the woman, the apple becomes dull in color after being soaked in hot water. There are some red drops of liquid covered on the fruit.

The woman said that she likes to eat the Red Delicious, a type of apple cultivated in the US. She put the apple into the hot water since she was waked by hunger in the cold weather. 

"The apple becomes.... just after lunchtime", she wrote. "Right after those beads were cleaned, more come out... and comparing to those unsoaked ones, it looks a lot lighter. Can anybody explain this for me ?"

It aroused heated discussions among netizens. Some suspected that the merchant had waxed the apples. Some joked,  "The apple was killed by you. She was bleeding..."

The local media has consulted the experts and they said the phenomenon was normal. They explained anthocyanins in apple peels will be degraded at high temperatures and since the anthocyanin is a natural pigment, it will seep out red water.

Anthocyanins are antioxidants that fight off free radicals and reduce body damages. The media also pointed out that southern people in the country seldom cook apples, so they are astonished about this while people who live in the north are not surprised at all. 

ROME (AP) — Italy’s antitrust authority fined Apple 98.6 million euros ($116 million) on Monday after determining that operating one of its privacy features restricted App Store competition. Apple said it would appeal the sanction.

Apple abused its dominant position with its App Tracking Transparency, ATT, policy, which forces apps to obtain permission before collecting data to target users with personalized ads, the antitrust authority said in a statement.

The company rolled out ATT starting in April 2021 as part of an update to the operating system powering the iPhone and iPad. While the feature was designed to tighten up privacy, it faced criticism from Big Tech rivals that it would make it harder for smaller apps to survive without charging consumers.

The authority didn’t criticize the policy per se, but the fact that the Apple system requires third-party app makers to ask users for consent twice in order to comply with Europe’s strict privacy rules.

“As a result, such double consent requirement is harmful to developers, whose business model relies on the sale of advertising space, as well as to advertisers and advertising intermediation platforms,” the authority said.

The authority said that the double consent required was “disproportionate” to the stated goal of data protection.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said it strongly disagreed with the finding and would appeal it, saying it disregarded the privacy protections of the policy “in favor of ad tech companies and data brokers who want unfettered access to users’ personal data."

“At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right, and we created App Tracking Transparency to give users a simple way to control whether companies can track their activity across other apps and websites," Apple said in a statement. “These rules apply equally to all developers, including Apple, and have been embraced by our customers and praised by privacy advocates and data protection authorities around the world."

The Italy antitrust finding is similar to one by the French antitrust watchdog, which in March fined Apple 150 million euros ($162 million) over the consent feature.

FILE - An Apple logo adorns the facade of the downtown Brooklyn Apple store on March 14, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)