The Thin Skin Truth Behind The Wrap
Walk into any grocery store and you’ll notice something peculiar. While regular cucumbers sit naked in bins, English cucumbers are always dressed up in plastic shrink wrap. English cucumbers are the variety most commonly sold wrapped in plastic because they have a particularly thin skin compared to American cucumbers, which have a thicker, tougher skin and are sturdy enough to be sold loose.
As J. Kenji Lopez-Alt points out in his book The Food Lab, English cucumbers have thin skins. This makes them susceptible to losing moisture as they sit on grocery shelves, transforming them from crisp and snappy to tough and bendy. Unlike their American cousins with their wax-coated armor, English cucumbers need protection to maintain that signature crunch we all love. It’s like the difference between wearing a leather jacket and a silk blouse in a windstorm.
Moisture Loss Creates a Limp Disaster
Picture this: you grab what looks like a perfect cucumber from the shelf, only to find it feels like a deflated balloon when you get home. “Due to the thinner skin on an English cucumber, the vegetable is more prone to moisture loss and bruising,” Brekke says. “The plastic wrapping helps to retain moisture and protect the vegetable until it is ready to be consumed.” The plastic acts like a personal humidity chamber for each cucumber.
Plastic wrap serves as an extra layer of protection for cucumbers that have particularly thin skin, like English cucumbers. This snug seal reduces and prevents rehydration and potential damage that can occur during packing and transit, and continues to play an important role even once you get them home. Without this protection, these vegetables would turn into expensive compost before they even made it to your shopping cart. The wrap literally keeps the cucumber alive and kicking.
Oxygen Is the Silent Killer
The “O” represents oxygen – it accelerates food spoilage as most microorganisms require oxygen to grow and multiply. Oxygen also causes oxidation, which turns the cucumbers brown. Just as the plastic wrap around English cucumbers keeps moisture in, it also keeps oxygen out, therefore slowing the rate of decay.
Think of oxygen as the ultimate party crasher for fresh produce. It keeps produce like cucumbers and broccoli from being exposed to oxygen, which can speed up the rate at which the food rots and becomes inedible. The plastic wrap creates a controlled atmosphere that’s basically the opposite of what bacteria and mold want for their multiplication celebrations. It’s food science at its finest, even if it looks wasteful on the surface.
Transport Damage Protection
An issue with thin-skinned English cucumbers is their propensity to be nicked, scratched, and bruised as they are transported from farm to store. Not only do shoppers prefer unblemished produce, these bumps and scratches can develop mold and rot, one reason why the FDA recommends buying fruit and vegetables that are not bruised or damaged.
English cucumbers travel like celebrities – they need bodyguards. Martha Stewart notes that English cucumbers have more delicate skin than other cucumbers – hence the need to protect the skin from any potential stressors while in transit to and fro the grocery store. The Spruce Eats relates that the skin can be “torn or nicked,” which could shorten its shelf life or even result in mold, so the plastic wrap is a protective barrier while it also helps to ensure freshness. Every bump, jostle, and drop during their journey from greenhouse to grocery store could spell disaster for these delicate vegetables.
Extended Shelf Life Benefits
Plastic-wrapped cucumbers typically last about 10 days in the refrigerator, which is a bit longer than their unwrapped counterparts. The plastic wrap is said to help a standard English cucumber last about 10 days. In addition, the individually wrapped vegetable also means that the cucumber literally goes untouched, unlike the majority of the other produce on display at the store.
The findings of this study bolstered a 2012 study that found that wrapping a cucumber can extend its shelf life by up to 15 days. Studies have reported that cucumbers wrapped in plastic have a shelf life almost three times longer than unwrapped cucumbers due to reduced moisture loss. This isn’t just convenience – it’s a complete game changer for reducing food waste throughout the entire supply chain.
The Environmental Plot Twist
Here’s where things get interesting and completely counterintuitive. For cucumbers transported from Spain and sold in Switzerland, our investigations in the form of a life cycle assessment study showed that the plastic wrapping has a rather low environmental impact (only about 1%) in comparison to the total environmental impacts of the fruit from grower to grocer. Hence, each cucumber that has to be thrown away has the equivalent environmental impact of 93 plastic cucumber wraps. We found that plastic wrapping protects the environment more by saving more cucumbers from spoilage than it harms the environment by the additional use of plastic.
If, by using the plastic wrap, we reduce cucumber losses at retail only by 1.1%, its use already has a net environmental benefit. Currently, in the cucumber import supply chain from Spain to Switzerland, the use of plastic wrapping lowers the cucumber losses at retail by an estimated 4.8%; therefore, it makes sense to use it from an environmental perspective. This completely flips the script on what we think about plastic packaging and environmental responsibility.
Food Waste Versus Plastic Pollution
Even with plastic wrap in use, the US Department of Agriculture estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of food is wasted. Rotting food emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Even with plastic wrap in use, the US Department of Agriculture estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of food is wasted. Rotting food emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization noted that, if food waste were compared to other countries, it would rank third in total emissions behind only China and the U.S.
To be more specific, when the researchers compared impacts caused by food waste and plastic wrapping, they discovered that the wrapping lowers impact by 157 kg CO2-eq per ton, which is 4.9 times higher than the negative environmental impact due to the packaging itself. To be more specific, when the researchers compared impacts caused by food waste and plastic wrapping, they discovered that the wrapping lowers impact by 157 kg CO2-eq per ton, which is 4.9 times higher than the negative environmental impact due to the packaging itself. Moreover, the team found that every single cucumber that goes into the garbage pile equals the impacts of the plastic packaging needed to wrap 93 cucumbers. The math is crystal clear – saving food trumps saving plastic when it comes to environmental impact.
Storage Tips for Maximum Freshness
Following suit with cucumber distributors, the best way to keep cucumbers fresh at home is to wrap them tightly with plastic wrap. Store them in the warmest part of your fridge – towards the front, farthest from the cooling elements as they prefer being stored at around 55°F. And hold off from washing them until you’re ready to enjoy them.
English cucumbers come wrapped in plastic for a reason, so Brekke recommends keeping them in their original plastic wrapping until you’re ready to use them – especially if you’re just cutting off a few slices. “If you intend to only use a portion of the cucumber at a time, peel back the plastic wrapping until the desired amount of cucumber is exposed,” Brekke says. It’s basically cucumber preservation 101 – work with the system, not against it.
The Rise of Plastic-Free Alternatives
Walmart is ditching the plastic wrap on long English cucumbers in select stores after striking a deal with veggie grower Houweling’s Group to test cucumbers coated in Apeel, an invisible plant-based edible skin proven to dramatically extend the shelf-life of fresh produce. English cucumbers coated in Apeel, however, do not require a plastic wrapper and last as long as those that do, removing thousands of pounds of plastic that would otherwise get thrown into landfill.
With the help of Apeel Sciences, Westmoreland Topline Farms will begin shipping greenhouse grown cucumbers without the plastic covering to retailers in the U.S. and Canada starting in June 2022. Apeel and Westmoreland joined forces in 2021 and haven’t looked back, announcing that they are ready to launch commercial volumes of English cucumbers free from single-use plastics for the first time in 35 years. Innovation is finally catching up with our environmental concerns.
Other Emerging Solutions
Swedish packaging solutions startup Saveggy has raised SEK 20M (€1.76M) to scale up its plastic-free, plant-based coating for fruits and vegetables, starting with cucumbers. Swedish packaging solutions startup Saveggy has raised SEK 20M (€1.76M) to scale up its plastic-free, plant-based coating for fruits and vegetables, starting with cucumbers. Its first product is called SaveCucumber, which features a thin, invisible layer made from oats and rapeseed oil.
BioBag World Australia and IG Fresh Produce have now come up with an alternative to polyethylene wrap that can be used to keep cucumbers fresh without damaging the environment. Working with BioBag, a bioplastic film was created from a compostable resin that makes use of plant materials including non-GM corn starch. The race is on to find the perfect replacement that works as well as plastic but won’t stick around for centuries afterward.
The Complex Reality Behind Plastic Bans
Recent efforts by several retailers to omit plastic wrapping for cucumbers have actually resulted in much higher amounts of food waste for imported products. Increased food waste due to the omission of plastic packaging increases the environmental impact due to the embodied energy and natural resources going into the production, distribution, and disposal of the food.
Reporting on WRAP’s research, The Times refers to France’s ban on plastic packaging for most fruit and vegetables, which came into effect in January 2022, as well as similar plans by Spain slated for 2023. The ban will target cucumbers, potatoes, bananas, and apples, among others, although there are exemptions for fruit and vegetables that are at risk of deterioration if sold in bulk. Good intentions sometimes clash with practical realities in ways that might actually hurt the environment more than help it.
