Washing vegetables AIBU to ask what's normal

[Annabella92]

So I remember a few years back there was an ecoli scare and for a couple of hours the theory was it was from Spanish cucumbers, so we were reminded then we should be washing our fruit and veg. In the wholefoods shop you can buy special rinses to rinse off pesticides from your produce. My Dad always said that these are designed to withstand rain and watering do the idea that a quick rinse will do anything is ridiculous. I've also heard many tales of fruitpickers scratching their bums and noses and handling our unwashed goods.

So obviously I think about this a fair bit!!! What is normal? What do you do? When I'm cooking for my family I tend to be a very thorough fruit and veg washer. But if I'm making a quick sandwich I'll not rinse the Iceberg, I might give the tomato a quick rub on my sleeve and I'll eat blueberries out the punnet while I'm driving.

What do you do? Which do you worry about more, bacteria or pesticides or none?

The only time I’ve ever washed fruit or veg is when my potatoes have visible dirt on them.

Yes EVERYONE in Britain is EXACTLY the same with their hygiene 🙄

I wash all fruit/veg OP. I don’t care about the dirt (cos I’m a filthy Brit apparently) but there are too many nasty chemicals for my liking.

Hard agree with this - maybe it's because in the US it's much more common to get salmonella, ecoli etc from unwashed vegetables (because the risk of cross contamination is higher), but I wouldn't dream of eating vegetables raw without washing them. Hadn't even thought of handlers picking their noses and now I'm thoroughly grossed out.

YABU to ask Mumsnet what's normal in relation to anything hygiene related.

There is no normal and you definitely won't find it amongst the hygiene obsessives on here.

I rinse off obvious dirt that would make it unpleasant to eat, but don't generally indulge in the sort of cleaning that would be effective at removing any germs and pesticides that are there.

After all, produce is grown in dirt and is out in the open for all sorts of creatures to crawl all over. The fact that the person that pulled it out of the ground might not have sprayed their hands with bleach before they picked it is the least of your worries.

Yes, that’s exactly what I said. Well done.

I wash everything (with water, not with and special rinses)

I wash mine as it comes from the farm shop and has visible dirt on it. Run it under a hot tap and go at it with a potato scrubber.

However if I ever get any from the supermarket I never wash it. I don't think about the chemicals etc at all, I'm only bothered if it's visible dirt. Might be weird but hey ho.

Never washed anything …maybe rinsed a muddy spud

@SWLondonLurker I totally agree! And we are not 3 years out of a pandemic!
I went bowling the other night and people were eating nachos then fingers in the bowling balls then licking salsa off them - I find it so shocking!

I dont wash them at all unless they have soill on

I wash leeks, spring onions and anything with mud on.

For people worried about pesticides on their foods - there are mandatory withholding periods (between when a pesticide is applied to a crop and when it is allowed to be harvested) which allows for chemicals to break down and residue levels to decrease. Also, pesticides that are used on food crops today (not so much the ones used pre 2001, when the regs were different), break down rapidly in sunlight or water, so they don't make their way into the food chain.

Fruit and veg are often kept in cold storage before they make it to the supermarket shelves - nothing is going to be active by the time it makes it to a domestic kitchen.

I wash everything that's not being peeled.

I don't wash them - I'm with pp who say they never get sick from it, so why would I bother.

For those of you that do - what do you wash with? Because if it's just water, what do you think that's achieving? And if it's with soap, what soap, and how much extra time does that take?

Anything cooked will have any bacteria killed, and most of it is washed/rinsed in the process of being packaged up for sale anyway...

Nah, root veg gets any mud rinsed off, but anything I'm cooking I don't care. Salad is far higher risk, I don't eat a lot of It anyway. Lettuce I'd discard the outside leaves anyway.
I've never bothered and never been ill.
I do mostly eat veg bought locally not supermarket stuff though

They're probably American.

"As a nation" they all shoot each other and their produce is bathed in dangerous chemicals so they'd die in minutes if they didn't decontaminate it.

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

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 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.

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

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.

Doesn't really occur to me to wash them.

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….😐

It's true, though 😅

Why wouldn't you wash?

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