Washing vegetables AIBU to ask what's normal

Rinsing something under a tap will not remove or kill any bacteria or pesticides.

After they're sliced, I put them in a colander and give them a good swill around. Bits of mud get stuck in the layers, towards the top.

I think if people had died from eating unwashed fruit and veg we would very much know about it!

🤣🤣

How do you wash leeks? I recently discovered I must have been eating tonnes of mud for years. Horrifying

Of course I wash vegetables before using them. Worst case scenario, it is unnecessary. There's no downside of washing them and potentially unpleasant downsides of not washing them. Sure, there will be people who never wash things before they eat them and largely get away with it, but in discussions like this the view is skewed because by definition the argument is between people who wash and survived versus people who don't wash and survive. The people who didn't wash and died can't contribute.

Germs build immunity. Never washed supermarket produce, but straight from a farm where there is still soil on I obviously would.

How the hell do worms get in the birth canal from eating food? 😂😂

Oh, goodness. Sorry I missed all this furore. I was interested in why someone would say this nasty thing. Why is it nasty? It should be clear I think but if not, let's break down this nasty sentence.

[As a nation, your attitude] <== stereotyping and generalising wildly
[towards general hygiene is] <== generalising out from washing veg to all forms of hygiene
[…interesting.] <== snide elision - we are are all dirty bastards, unlike her, and she is disgusted by us, but importantly she wants us to know

So I was really wondering what she gets out of telling everyone this in this snide, covertly hostile way. I've noticed this on threads on MN. If you think [x,y] people are so awful, why do you also want them to know this. It's interesting to me. So I've been asking from time to time, when I see these very tamped down nasty comments, what makes people want to say them. It's not just this person, it's all over MN, and sometimes they are very BIG horrible comments like people saying they shouldn't have had kids or diagnosing them with personality disorders, but often they are more tamped down, just expressions of suppressed, bitter hostility. And I wonder, what is going on with people when they act like this. I'm really interested. I actually do want to know!

Oh god...... what a faff
Never wash
55 years old
Never been sick
3 boys survived also

I don't wash (or peel unless is strictly necessary) the majority of fruit or veg.

I might rinse some berries, just to make sure there's not anything lurking inside the raspberries etc.

I'll rinse if there's mud (or rub it off if its just a bit).

I don't even understand washing if you're cooking - surely any germs wouldn't survive the cooking process?

I don't much care what other people do. Except one friend who I saw meticulously peel the skin from a chicken and wash it about 7 times. I thought she was nuts, but I understand its cultural.

Did you just ignore the other part of their post?

"As a nation, your attitude towards general hygiene is…interesting."

I wash apples before I eat them. I don't wash things I'm peeling. I do wash potatoes that are going to be cooked in their jackets. I don't wash anything that is going to be boiled such as broccoli or cauliflower. I do wash salad and use a spinner.

I would rinse actual mud off veg but otherwise don't bother washing fruit and veg. Always have organic where possible and eat the skins for roughage. The model I have in my head is that human bodies are well adapted to fighting germs and that being exposed to germs is absolutely necessary to grown a healthy gut biome and overall immune system

In my lifetime, I've notice increasing attempts to try and create sterile environmental even for fit and healthy people, which IMHO has lead directly to the rise in allergies and weakened immune systems

For myself and my family, always avoid sterile environments and have no truck with routine use of anti-bacterial substances in the home. We are all pretty healthy and seldom get colds etc. don't routinely supplement either but eat plenty of real, whole veg.

Obviously, were I caring for someone with a serious illness and/or compromised immune system, I would be answering very differently.

The reason a lot of people in the UK don't wash vegetables/fruit is because they are mostly sold prewashed anyway and look in edible shape. If they looked as if they were covered in muck then people would probably wash them more.

I don't know why they recommend washing them again. Probably to get rid of any pesticide traces and any traces of dirt not removed by the first wash.

Not American. Happy to say that we do none of those things. 🤣

I've never even heard of that worm thing at all
I wash leeks and celery as gritty and potatoes if not peeling. Nothing else

It's true, though 😅

Why wouldn't you wash?

We wash everything that is from the fruit or vegetable aisle, using pesticide remover and for hard produce a hard brush. For berries and salad leaves we soak with pesticide remover and white vinegar and then rinse several times. I’m always amazed how much dirt, bugs and grime are left behind. I also notice a weird whitish residue which I think is pesticides, especially when I buy produce while visiting the US. Thoroughly cleaning produce whether you’ll cook it or not is normal where I am from, including for people who grow their own produce. I’m not British. The thing that grosses me out is worms and other soil-borne parasites. I remember when my sister was doing her rotation in obstetrics at a British hospital she was horrified at the number of worms that came out when the mums pushed hard. None of the nurses or doctors appeared shocked and just brushed the worms off the babies heads and carried on because it was normal for them….😐

Doesn't really occur to me to wash them.

I don't wash vegetables if I'm peeling them but wash everything else. I am concerned about pesticides and about 90% of the fruit and vegetables I buy are organic.

I don’t think about it a lot, but I wash all fruit and vegetables.

i rinse too but it doesn’t feel very effective, eg I am pregnant and know there is a listeria risk from bagged salads but also can’t see how rinsing would remove listeria? So I mostly just try to cook everything at the moment. I did read that baking soda is good to use so sometimes I use that.

Never washed any fruit or veg but I dont think my mother did either. I do the opposite of most things my mother did but that’s more with slightly emotionally neglectful or mean things so I’ve probably run out of energy for things like veg. Oh I tell a lie, I used to have to rub off the soil and the skins of baby new potatoes with the kitchen scourer .

I rinse under cold water, but just as likely to eat apples or raw carrots straight from supermarket.