Leaving the orange symbolism aside...

Fruit used to mean more than it does today. Even in my memory, back to the mid-sixties, out-of-season fruit wasn't taken for granted. If people went to Florida during the winter, they would bring a box of oranges or grapefruit. People who moved there would mail a box back home. Fruits arrived in a very seasonal progression, and then we wouldn't see them again for a year. There were no grapes from Chile or citrus from Brazil. In the Eastern US, we'd nearly always see the spherical Carolina melons instead of the oblong ones from California.

Keep in kind the little scene in GF2 where Vito takes the pear to his wife. A nice piece of fruit was a gift, more welcome than most candy.