What you see: Black dots on your orange peel.
What it is: Peel damage of some kind.
Eat or toss: If the orange looks and smells good under the peel, go ahead and eat.
Can you eat an orange with spots on the peel?
We previously wrote about a grapefruit with unsightly black spots that were likely caused by physical injuries. Now we have a similarly afflicted orange. In this case, however, it’s quite possible that some kind of tiny antagonist is at work.
Still, the guidance is the same: if the damage is restricted to the peel, and the orange otherwise looks and smells fine, it should be good to eat.
“If you cut it and you can see that it’s limited to the peel, then it’s not going to affect the eating quality of the produce,” said Mark Ritenour, a professor of postharvest technology at the University of Florida.
Various fungi and insects can damage the peel with no impact on the fruit underneath. “Scab” and “melanose,” for example, are disorders triggered by fungi that can leave dark spots on the fruit surface. Physical damage, whether from rough handling or exposure to problematic combinations of humidity and/or high and low temperatures, can also blemish the peel, often without affecting the fruit below.
Yet all these blemishes can look similar, making identification, particularly from a photo, difficult. Ritenour noted that scientist and Florida citrus legend William Grearson was known to say: “Citrus peel only has so many ways of expressing its displeasure.” Grearson was inducted into the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame in 1995.
Ritenour said this image alone wasn’t enough to draw any firm conclusions about what exactly caused the spots. And while this orange is probably still good for eating, this kind of disease or damage does put it at higher risk for going bad faster. Don’t wait to eat it!
Thanks to reader Patricia for sending in this image!
