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!

I always wash fruit, even organic. It's not just about the pesticides, but also the human and animal bodily fluids that your fruit has been splashed with. Bird/animal poo in the fields, the people who pick and sort the fruit, rats in warehouses, other shop customers coughing and sneezing over the fruit before you buy it...

I used to work on a farm. There were portaloos for the pickers, but they were often several fields away. Pickers got paid according to how much they'd picked and if they were walking for ten mins to and from the porta loo, they weren't picking, so lots of the men just used to wee in the fields...

I never do.

I grew up with a large orchard of apple, plum and pear trees and we never washed any of it, just picked and ate. Same for beans and tomatoes. But stuff nearer the ground I would be a bit cautious of 😂

My dd is a nightmare she just saunters around picking and eating from our garden; beans, apples, blackberries, toms, peppers. I did thoroughly wash our strawberries and root veg and I’ve had to be really strict about our chillies because I just imagine her one day picking one and chomping then being in for a shock…she is 2 btw! She has pretty much single-handedly eaten every blackberry within a four mile radius of our village when we’ve been out on walks the last month or so. Very few have made it home with us..

Almost all fresh fruit and veg I buy I do wash though, apart from peeling fruit. Even melons because I worry about the knife being contaminated by the outside 🙈 my weird ways are often illogical and inconsistent 🤣

I don’t wash any fruit, never have.

I’m still alive, it would appear.

We use FIT WASH

A quick rinse for berries. Don’t wash anything else. I do try to buy organic if it’s available but yeah…too lazy.

I never wash fruit.

Just give them a rinse under the tap. I'm still here at 60.

I wash the outside of my watermelon with warm soapy water before I cut into it. They are known to harbour salmonella on the surface and outbreaks happen quite often because of it.

I don't bother washing anything else really unless it's visibility dirty

Only time I ever washed fruit or veg was in a commercial setting, and it was a good hygiene thing. At home never.

Nice to know I’m not the only one who doesn’t bother washing their fruit.

To all the people saying "I'm still alive" That's nit the point! No one is saying the pesticides will give you cancer immediately 🤷🏻‍♀️

Of course all the people who have died horribly from not washing their fruit are no longer around to add their comments, so perhaps this thread is a bit biased. It's a similar to;

'Just because no one complains, it doesn’t mean that all parachutes are perfect'

😂

I always do, but it's annoying to wash raspberries as they can already be a bit mushy.

I wouldn’t bother washing something that had been wrapped or in a punnet.

Right, but what will a quick rinse under the cold tap actually do to get rid of muck, pesticides etc?

Surely you'd need to wash your fruit in hot water and soap to get it properly "clean"?

No, rinsing reduces surface pesticides that is widely known.

I don't wash any fruit.

@lannistunut I'm sure it does, but to make fruit properly clean (people are talking about getting rid of all the animal urine and muck) you'd need to use soap and hot water, surely?

Otherwise we could just run our hands under the cold tap for two seconds and they'd be clean?

I can’t believe people don’t wash their fruit!

I always wash fruit and veg. If only just a quick rinse.

It’s not even about pesticides.
Imagine how many animals have wee’d or poi’s on them, the manure used to grow them and the stories I’ve heard about the grubby pickers and packers make me feel very 🤢

Its literally like going to the toilet and not washing your hands and then picking up a sandwich and eating it but worse as it’s someone else’s excrement.

I wonder if those who don’t wash their fruit or veg don’t bother washing their hands before cooking or making food?

Like most of life, it is not binary clean or dirty. There is a sliding scale from clean to dirty. Rinsing is recommended because the dose of something matters - a peck of dirt is better than a lot of dirt!

I personally would rather eat less piss than more piss.

I usually rinse briefly under the tap. Sometimes I’ll just eat grapes out of the plastic tray though

Exactly the same as this when I do it at all. If it looks like it needs it.

My grandma used to be fastidious (and insist I perform the same) with ‘polishing’ an apple on your shirt before eating “to get the nasties off”

@lannistunut , I think you've mistaken the 'peck' for a small amount. It's actually 12-14lb.