Have you ever wondered why some fruits and vegetables have a small label with a barcode ? He never takes care to collect the product in supermarkets, much less in markets, but then what does he do there?
The Consumer TV Magazine of the Federal Consumer Attorney’s Office (Profeco) revealed what it is about.
The code on the small labels of fruits and vegetables is called PLU, an acronym for Price Lookup, which means price lookup, but these are not always designed to reveal the value of something, as is the case with fruits and vegetables, count fulfill the function of informing the form of cultivation and characteristics of the food. These labels are used by stores to do their inventory but can also be used by consumers.
Profeco details that the one in charge of assigning these codes is the International Federation for Product Standards. You can identify them in the following way:
- If the label contains five digits and starts with the number nine, it means that it is an organic product. In other words, no pesticides or fertilizers were used for its cultivation.
- If it has five digits and starts with the number eight, it means that it is a generically modified product.
- The four-digit code means that the food has been grown conventionally, that is, using pesticides. Profeco adds that, although the zero at the beginning of the codes is for all fruits and vegetables that are grown in this way, it does not usually appear on the label.
The numbers integrated in these labels also allow to identify if the product in question was grown in a specific region, similar to the appellation of origin. Other data contained in these numbers can be the color, variety, weight and size of the fruit or vegetable.
