Pineapple ripened or off-green. A plant growth regulator, Ethephon, is typically sprayed onto the fruit one week before harvest, developing ethylene, which turns the fruit golden yellow. After cleaning and slicing, a pineapple is typically canned in sugar syrup with added preservative. A pineapple never becomes any riper than it was when harvested. The fruit itself is quite perishable and if it is stored at room temperature, it should be used within two days; however, if it is refrigerated, the time span extends to 5–7 days. Mimi Sheller writes: "The pineapple entered European iconography as a symbol of welcome and hospitality,
Forbidden fruit Adam and Eve upon expelling them from the Garden. "By that with which they were made low were they rectified." Since the fig is a long-standing symbol of female sexuality, it enjoyed a run as a favorite understudy to the apple as the forbidden fruit during the Italian Renaissance. The most famous depiction of the fig as the forbidden fruit was painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti in his masterpiece fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Proponents of the theory that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in what is now known as the Middle East suggest that the fruit was