Vitamin C has the ability to stop fruits from turning brown, but how does it do this? Does the vitamin protect the fruit without creating any harmful chemicals? Or does the vitamin C protect the fruit by transforming into something that is toxic or dangerous? Is it better to let fruit turn brown? Would it be better for restaurants to process certain fruits in nitrogen rather than use vitamin C?

If you put some vitamin C into coffee or tea, it will lighten the color. Normally you don't put vitamin C into coffee, but when you add lemon juice to tea, you are adding vitamin C, as well as lots of other chemicals and acids. Is that harmful to the tea? Or beneficial?

Can vitamin C protect bread or meat? I've been putting a little vitamin C into my bread in the hope that it protects the bread, or am I making the situation worse?

Loquats start turning brown within minutes!
 

	Here is a loquat that I just cut in half.  Loquats become brown so quickly that the first thing I do is put some vitamin C into a bowl, and then I mash up a piece of loquat in order to dissolve the vitamin C. Then, as I cut the loquats into the bowl, I stir the loquat pieces in the vitamin C mixture.
	I also add some Stevia to the mixture to sweeten it a bit. The loquats are not always fully ripe because the birds have a tendency to pick at them, so I often have to pick them before they're completely ripe. Also, loquats have not been bred for decades by farmers, so they don't ripen quite as nicely as some of the other fruit. Some loquats will be very ripe, while others touching it are moldy, and others are still green. Also, once they become ripe, they quickly start developing bad spots. They don't remain ripe for very long.

 
 

The photo below shows the peeled and sliced loquat in the bowl. They have been stirred with a spoon so that the vitamin C liquid has covered all of them.

To show you the amazing effect of vitamin C, in the photo below, along the left, is a piece of loquat that I cut at the same time I was cutting up all of the other pieces. However, I did not put that piece into the bowl with the vitamin C. Instead, I laid it aside and continued cutting up the other pieces.

On the right side of the photo is a black spoon that has some pieces of loquat that were dipped into the vitamin C liquid. All of these slices are virtually the same all of these slices were cut at virtually the same time, but one of them has turned brown within only a few minutes.

The brown color is initially only along the surface of the loquat, but as time passes, the color extends into the fruit. In this photo, I am tearing that piece of brown loquat in half, and you can see that the interior is almost completely brown. So, what is actually happening to this fruit? Why does fruit turn brown? Is it dangerous?