To think a lot of people dont actually wash fruit?

[TartanDr3ams]

Or are me and 90% of my colleagues gross?

Got some strawberries, blueberries and grapes on my break earlier and just plonked the punnets on my desk and told my workmates to help themselves.. a few people dive in, a quick thanks and back to work.

One colleague just made the monster of all fusses over the fact that ive not washed all said fruit and put into bowls and i quote "its absolutely barbaric that youre expecting people to eat right from the punnet they came in".

Maybe i should wash the fruit.. or maybe if you want to dig into my fruit you can wash it yourself?

I am someone who has pretty low standards of cleanliness but I always wash fruit unless I'm peeling it. DH picked fruit and veg for a market garden when he was younger and he said they didn't pay much attention to hygiene!

I never have. Never seen the point really. I have a stomach of steel, I can't remember ever having a stomach bug.

HobbyKing hasn't reported back

I should wash fruit...I do not.

People should wash it themselves .

Who knew - legions of fruit and veg pickers shitting in the fields!

Washing under cold water will remove a significant amount of bacteria.

There was an outbreak of salmonella a few years ago in Uk which came from people not washing cucumbers

Yes I couldn'd eat anything raw without a really thorough wash and I peel everything that can be peeled. Not only because of germs but also pesticides.
BUT I wouldn't dream of insulting the person offering the fruit with comments like that, would just politely decline with an excuse. She was very rude 😮 x

I wash all fruit & veg.

Aside from the chemicals all over it, the floors/machines/trucks/god know what its sat in during the trip from field to bowl, think of all the people that could have picked it up in the supermarket.

All those people that could have been handling ANYTHING.

You wouldn't lick a strangers hand so wash your fruit & veg.

If they're berries or grapes etc then I'll rinse them in the punnet and try to rub them together to get anything off. Then rinse a few more times. Apple's, pears etc get a good rub too. It's not hard. I always wash my fruit cause if the risk of pesticides and germs from people handling them.

Nothing to do with fruit or veg but my Grandmother always told me to rinse cans of fizzy drinks before I drink out of them, she said rats pee on them in warehouses. It didn’t really affect me as my DM never let me drink out of cans because apparently it’s common

Could someone who actually knows what they're talking about (so, not me) confirm whether or not a quick swish under the cold water tap gets rid of nasties?

If you buy, for example, strawberries or grapes in plastic boxes - have they already been washed?

And those of you peeling stuff - aren't you getting rid of the part with most of the fibre?

bringmejava things in punnets haven’t been washed.
I saw some research once by Friends of the Earth( I think) and they said a lot of the insecticides/ fungicides/ fertilisers are removed with cold water, I think they said 70 -80%. But they recommended a mild detergent ( a particular product I think) to get it all off.
I don’t think they mentioned bacteria at all, but obviously that won’t be removed by rinsing.

but how do you know what it is that made you sick?

I've honestly never been sick with a stomach complaint.

I put on a stone in India & was eating from roadside stalls - you'd hate to think what was on their hands !!

I bite my nails, stroke strange dogs and yes, I've licked a strangers hand (damn you alcohol!!). I've mineswept, bummed other people's ciggies & swapped bodily fluids with people I've barely met.

An unwashed Pink Lady fazes me not a jot!!!!

Are you still with us HobbyKing ??

I do. Strawberry’s are grown in poo.

@illustrious

I have worked picking fruit.

I have also lived in the Middle East where there are public information broadcasts advising people to wash fruit with water and washing up liquid. This is after health outbreaks from E Coli on fruit and tomatoes.

It isn't the germs that bother me, and I am a microbiologist. It is the pesticides and other chemicals such as copper sulphate on fruit, particularly on grapes. Only soap or detergent will get this off.

I always wash fruit, just like I do salad. The thought of not, is gross. You don’t know how clean the hands were of the workers who handled it.

I never wash fruit. If your colleague is so upset about it, why don't they just run it under the tap themselves. Or better still, buy their own fruit.

Strawberries are one of the dirty dozen, with a high concentration of pesticides still present. We should really soak them in bicarbonate of soda as that gets rid of more pesticides than any other method. I don’t currently do that but always rinse, might do more in the future

I don’t.

The cucumber thing was disproved in the end wasn’t it? I totally see why some would but my mum was a hygiene freak so
I just don’t think about these things too much as I don’t want to obsess like her.

You can’t get TB from unwashed fruit btw

Yes always. Even if the pack stressed it has already been washed. I wouldn't make a massive fuss like your colleague did, big I probably wouldn't eat any. My MIL gets exasperated when I wash the kids' fruit and raw veg at their house. But that's just one of many things she doesn't kind about me!!

Never washed anything. It goes through A LOT of processing before it reaches our fridges.

I wash fruit. Have you see the way some people touch fruit and open punnets to poke the fruit in the supermarkets? F knows if their hands are clean