On Sun, 14 Apr 1996, Ross McKenzie wrote:

	What I was trying to get at was that when Goodkind defined his 
fictional world, he made some choices _just because_ he, Goodkind, needed a 
conflict.  In my opinion, the decision to have the bad guys curse all red 
stuff was a bad one, particularly since there was no hint of this curse 
until after the conflict.  If I remember the chronology right, it was: 1) 
hero offers heroine an apple, 2) she freaks and gets mad, _then_ 3) she 
explains the curse, which then gets dropped, never to be mentioned again 
in the book.

Read the second book.  It was a set up.