To ask how well you wash your fruit?

[Badoukas]

So lately I've been eating more soft fruit like raspberries, blueberries, cherries etc. The type you get in plastic trays from supermarkets, not marketed as organic.

Does anyone know if this kind of product is likely to have been sprayed with pesticides, and if so, how much rinsing does it actually need? I feel like I could be trying to do something healthy whilst simultaneously poisoning myself with nasty chemicals!

Never washed fruit. Still alive 37 years later to tell the tale.

Oh ok. Then why are you washing the skin? I don’t know if I’m missing something but it seems like you’re washing the skin, eating the unwashed part, then throwing the washed part in the bin.

You're not missing anything. The OP asked if anyone washes their fruit and I said that I do. I also said I understand my way of doing things is not for everyone.

I don't

I barely wash it at all.. a quick splash with cold water, probably doesn't do anything tbh

I soak berries briefly- to float any bugs, then rinse under the tap. Normally wash or peel all other fruit/veg. Baked potatoes get a scrub from my potato brush and rinsed before cooking.

There have been multiple, recent outbreaks from hepatitis (usually Hep A) from frozen berries- but I think its fruit mainly from the US and China. I don't buy frozen berries!

I've never washed fruit in my life.
I picked an apple off a tree the other day and started eating it DD10 was hurried saying hamsters & cats had probably pooped on it

Horrified not hurried

You can soak fruit in water with a splash of apple cider vinegar. Apparently that gets the pesticides off better. Rinse again after obvs.

I don’t. Mind you I don’t actually like fruit really! I do eat veg before anyone has a hernia.

DD eats tons though. I did wash it for about a week when she weaned but couldn’t be arsed after that.

I can't believe how many people don't wash their fruit & veg!

Really bad to wash chicken! 🙈

This.

Never washed fruit ever.

I'd rather pay the extra for organic, but what infuriates me is that when I was a child, none of our fruits and vegetables had pesticides on and now we have to pay extra for the privilege, the worlds gone mad. X

I don’t wash fruit , I might run the cold tap on an apple , But not soft fruit

Wow! That is amazing. I'm really young, compared to you, so don't remember the time before pesticides were used. Can you tell me more? Obviously my grandparents were adults in the 40s when use of DDT first became widespread, but I know very little about pesticide use in the centuries before that, and you must know masses?

Also: given you've apparently lived for several centuries, could you let us in on the secret?

Most fruit punnits tend to come with little holes in the top, so I usually fill the punnit up with water, give it a swish around then pour the water out of the little holes. Or alternatively I'll pour berries into a collender and run water of them then put them into a bowl...fruit like apples/pears etc I splash under tap before eating. But really all these things are just habit that I've done without much thought since childhood. I doubt splashing them under cold water is actually cleaning them much.

The only fruit I would be a bit bothered about washing before eating is things like raspberries and blackberries as sometimes when I've poured water over them I've seem little wormy things floating around.

When I’m about to eat any fruit at home I:

• pop it in a colander or large sieve
• rinse it for about 10 seconds in cold tap water
• shake the colander or sieve to drain most of the water
• tip it out onto a few sheets of kitchen roll to absorb remaining water
• gobble it up
• transfer to a bowl/plate

Pesticides are used on organic fruit and veg. I don't wash any. Am assuming the washing of chicken was a joke,you should never wash chicken,a perfect recipe for spreading bacteria.

Goole the 'Dirty Dozen fruit'.

They test which foods have the highest chemical residue. I usually buy organic of the ones of the list, or at least give them a soak beforehand.

There was a paper published a while ago that found men who were in the top 25% consumers of high-residue pesticide fruit had 50% percent lower sperm count than the lowest consumers.

I don't

Never wash any fruit and never have. I can't imagine washing soft fruit, in particular!

You really shouldn’t wash chicken or meat. If there are bacteria on them you’re just splashing it all over your sink and cooking properly will kill them.

But maybe I shouldn’t judge because I don’t usually wash fruit, especially soft fruit. I don’t even wash the apple I buy from a corner shop on the way to work and eat at my desk (I have to make sure I don’t think about it too much). I do wash grapes because they often have that kind of dusty coating.

I suspect any nominal rinsing I do doesn’t really make any difference anyway.

Interesting comments about ‘the dirty dozen’. I don’t know whether to Google or whether it’s best I don’t have another thing to worry about right now!