Salt water beats lemon juice for brown apples

The best no-lemon fix for cut apples and pears is a five-minute soak in salt water — then rinse and pack.

Sounds backwards, but salt water actually deactivates the enzyme that causes browning. Lemon juice just masks it with acid. Mix about half a teaspoon of salt into a cup of water, soak the slices for five minutes, drain, rinse so they don’t taste salty, and pack. They’ll stay pale for a full school day.

If you’d rather skip the rinse step, honey water is the runner-up. Two tablespoons of honey dissolved in a cup of water does the same enzyme-blocking job, and you can pack them straight out of the soak with a faint sweetness kids won’t complain about.

Use a sharp knife and avoid bruising before the soak — crushed cells release more of that enzyme. Skip the rubber-band-the-apple-back-together trend too; it looks cute but doesn’t slow browning since all the cut surfaces are still exposed.

Five minutes of soaking beats a sad, brown apple at snack time.