How to Get Your Produce Clean

Any time that you buy your food from a supermarket, you can also be buying produce with pesticides and other contamination on it. For this reason, you want to be sure to minimize your risk and clean your produce in the best way possible. Even food that is organic can still have pathogens and other food related matter that you want to remove.

Does Plain Water Work To Make Veggies Clean?

Of course, anything that you clean with, you also wants to be able to ingest. There have been many debates over ways to effectively remove pesticides and harmful food-borne bacteria. Although it seems surprising, scientists have found that an effective measure is to use plain tap water to rinse the vegetables.

Should You Use Soap To Wash Veggies?

It seems as if mild soap would be more effective. However, scientist did not find that it was. The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station compared pesticide removal on samples of lettuce. They added some to a solution of one percent dishwashing soap, some to plain tap water, and others to a popular fruit and vegetable wash.

How Do You Make Your Veggies Extra Clean?

Both washing with soap and washing with plain water were found to significantly reduce the residues of nine to twelve pesticides. However, the scientists were quick to point out that a mild amount of friction mattered when using playing tap water.

Anti-Bacterial Solutions For Washing Veggies

The University of Florida did further tests and found plain vinegar added to water reduced the number of available bacteria and viruses to almost 95 percent. Overall, your best solution is to wash all of your vegetables in a tap water and 10% vinegar based solution.

Resources:

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station