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Hold the lime! Could eating citrus zest and peel really be bad for your health?

Food safety campaigners have long been concerned about pesticide residues on lemons, limes and oranges – and now a social media post about it has gone viral. How safe is it to eat lemon cake or drink a G&T with ice and a slice?

Do you sprinkle citrus zest on to your cooking or drink hot water with a slice of lemon? According to an Instagram post that went viral last week, you shouldn’t. “Select citrus fruits at Lidl now come with a ‘Peel unfit for consumption’ warning,” posts @wholefoodwarrior. She photographs some of the supermarket’s labels, which list the post-harvest chemicals used to conserve the fruit: azoxystrobin and fludioxonil (limes) and imazalil, 2-phenylphenol, thiabendazole, pyrimethanil and fludioxonil (easy peelers), plus E903 in the peel’s wax coating (both).

The 10,500 comments on the post are largely appalled. So what are these substances? And how worried should consumers be?

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© Photograph: Steve Lupton/Getty Images

© Photograph: Steve Lupton/Getty Images

© Photograph: Steve Lupton/Getty Images

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The shocking rise of rib remodelling: ‘I wanted that hourglass shape’

It involves the fracturing of a patient’s ribs, before they spend three months laced into a corset. Some of those who have had this cosmetic procedure say it is like being ‘hit by a bus’. Why is it becoming more popular?

Daniela Cesin was 14 when she began thinking about her looks. “I was a little bit chubby and I started to work out at home and lose weight. I saw the difference in my body: my abs, the muscles in my arms, and I started liking it,” she says. By 31, she had the slim, toned body she had hoped for, but something was still missing. “I wanted to have that guitar hourglass shape.”

In August, Cesin travelled from Miami, where she has lived for the past 15 years, to her native Venezuela for liposuction and a fat transfer to her hips. She met her cosmetic surgeon for the first time the day before the procedure, and he realised she didn’t have enough fat to go ahead with it. Instead, he offered to perform RibXcar: a rib remodelling surgery that would involve fracturing three of her lower ribs on each side and binding them in a corset for three months, to set the ribs in a new position and give her a wasplike waist.

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© Illustration: Michelle Thompson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Michelle Thompson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Michelle Thompson/The Guardian

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