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Washing produce

jimtron

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jimtron
Joined
Mar 9, 2005
Messages
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Location
Los Angeles, California
How should produce from the grocery store be washed? Usually I just run fruit and vegetables under the tap, but it occurred to me that maybe that's not enough. I'm no germaphobe, and I generally don't buy organic, but I'm wondering if a quick water rinse is enough for something like an apple where you eat the peel. I am wondering about pesticides and germs from handling by many different people.
 
We always run it under a the kitchen tap full pressure (hot too) and wipe the surface all over.

One idea is the people who handled the produce before you, may not have washed their hands after using the bathroom, adn you need to deal with that.
 
Depends greatly on what you are trying to remove. Nearly all insecticides and fungicides are initially water soluble. They are sprayed on to plants after dilution in water. Often during application as surfactant is added which reduces surface tension and allows the mix to spread over the plant surface and not "bead up". The thing is that most insecticides and fungicides break down very quickly on exposure to air and sunlight. Of course the simple mineral agents - copper salts and such are soluble.

There are some exceptions. Some of the SI (sterol inhibitor) fungicides will cling to a plant surface nicely if they have a few hours to dry, but these are almost totally ineffective after 2 weeks. Most of the systemic insecticides cannot be legally used on fruit plants (mostly restricted to inedible flowers & shrubs).

Monsanta famously has created several glyphosate resistant grain crops. Glyphosate is a "kill all" herbicide that has been used for many years, prior to planting to kill weeds. Now glyphosate can be used during the plant growth cycles of GMO corn for example to kill weed competition. The glyphosate is absorbed into plant cells and disrupts photosynthesis metabolism. Glyphosate apparently has little impact on mammalian metabolism, but .... There are well know reactions to *some* of the surfactants used to apply glyphosate, which affects AG workers, but the glyphosate in grain seems to have little or no effect. Anyway you can't rinse the glyphosate off a tortilla wrap or a corn chip. I'm not convinced we care.

So yeah - rinse the fruit in a little cold soapy water, may salve your green-consciousness and remove any of the residuals *IF* the grower violated the application laws. I think this may actually be a smart idea for fruits like citrus that has inedible skins and therefore they permit very late and extensive applications. Maybe a good idea with apples, pears that require extensive spraying to make then "market acceptable" and have some hidden surfaces.
 
stevea said:
So yeah - rinse the fruit in a little cold soapy water, may salve your green-consciousness and remove any of the residuals *IF* the grower violated the application laws. I think this may actually be a smart idea for fruits like citrus that has inedible skins and therefore they permit very late and extensive applications. Maybe a good idea with apples, pears that require extensive spraying to make then "market acceptable" and have some hidden surfaces.
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AFAIK it should be enough to gently rub the entire surface area of the produce under warm, running, water. Of course, this assumes you have washed your hands first!
 
Have you ever got ill from eating fruit and veg? If not then carry on doing what you are doing, maybe?
 
Fiona said:
Have you ever got ill from eating fruit and veg? If not then carry on doing what you are doing, maybe?
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Well I know I have gotten ill before, rarely do I know what from. I have also ate fruit and vegetables without washing them before (apples especially), perhaps sometimes before getting ill.

It's pretty hard to know if any of those times were the cause of the illness.
 
jimtron said:
How should produce from the grocery store be washed? Usually I just run fruit and vegetables under the tap, but it occurred to me that maybe that's not enough. I'm no germaphobe, and I generally don't buy organic, but I'm wondering if a quick water rinse is enough for something like an apple where you eat the peel. I am wondering about pesticides and germs from handling by many different people.
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I just wash it like I wash my hands, except for things like broccoli, that I soak and rinse, not a long soak, just enough to loosen stuff and then a good rinse.

There can be a lot of grit in vegetables, now some people I know believe that you want to not look to carefully at home grown broccoli because of the cabbage white larvae.
 
Some times people think they have "the flu" when in fact they have come in contact with dirty food, I forget how often the article said they felt that happens, but I remember it being alarming at the time.

I like the idea of using a little soap too ... but I wonder how healthy it is to eat tiny bits of soap residue? so I just use plain water.

The thing with getting sick from contaminated food is the incubation period for some of the various illnesses can be days or even up to a couple weeks ... so there's no way to know for sure which food made you sick a lot of the time ... OR like I say even if it IS from food (it could just be be 'the flu')
 
It is true that it would be difficult to be sure: I am quite lucky: I don't get ill very often. Not often enough to worry about this, anyway. Perhaps if it was a frequent thing I would begin to wonder about it. But to be honest I think that way lies madness
 
That's a good point a sort of reverse logic, if you are not getting ill it's reasonable to think the food preparation procedures you use are working properly.
 
"Excess sanitation" seems to come up as harmful in studies from time to time. Cleaner people seem to be more prone to allergies. And "fecal transplants" are a bonafide treatment for some intestinal infections. And dysentery can be treated by eating fresh horse dung. Seems a horses stomach is a good place to breed beneficial biota.

You can't catch "The Plague" form stuff that has no plague germs on it. And you won't catch anything you have immunity to already. Then there are all those beneficial germs. You can't give yourself any disease from your own ejecta, because you already have that germ. So I think sanitation is vastly over rated.

And pesticide fear with today's bug sprays is unreasonable.

And I doubt that anything harmful will still be harmfiul after cooking.

So sometimes I wash of the visible dirt, sometime I don't work that hard.
 
One idea is the people who handled the produce before you, may not have washed their hands after using the bathroom, adn you need to deal with that.
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Yeah, or sneezed in their hand, etc.

And I doubt that anything harmful will still be harmfiul after cooking.
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What about produce you don't cook, like apples or grapes?

Bowlofred, I'll check out those links.
 
I just pick the stuff up from the open boxes in the village shop, take it home, put it in the fruit bowl, then pick it up and eat it.

Never occurred to me to wash it.

Still alive, currently.

Rolfe.
 
I use dish soap. good enough for the dishes, good enough for the fruit.

Mostly just because it grosses me out to think about somebody else touching it with whatever on their hands.

A couple years ago I read that experiments had shown that dish soap gets as much "stuff" off as those specialty fruit washes. No cite.
 
Fruit I wouldn't worry about too much.

Commercially grown veg that is eaten raw and grown at ground level needs washing. Lettuce, cucumber etc. Don't be impressed by pre-packaged stuff that looks clean.

p.s the gazzillion little green caterpillars that lurk with perfect camouflage in your home-grown brocolli represent an excellent source of accidental animal protein :D
 
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