I think your code actually proves my point, not yours.

use Data::Dumper;

my @array=('water','wine','applepie','beer','orange juice',"apple\n");
my @dels=('apple','orange');
my $dels = join '|',
           map quotemeta,
           @dels;
@array = grep !/^($dels)$/, @array;

print Dumper \@array;
__END__
$VAR1 = [ 
          'water',
          'wine',
          'applepie',
          'beer',
          'orange juice'
        ];
[download]

It removes both "apple" and "apple\n"—even though "apple\n" was not one of the @dels. If you change the $ to \z in the regular expression, the "apple\n" comes through (and "apple" is still removed).