This thread reminds me of an old Married With Children episode.
(just a little over a minute long)
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Sterilizing your peppers
- Thread starter TjMartin
- Start date
I had never heard of anyone washing their fruit and vegetables with soap before. I just rinse everything in water. I used to pick raspberries off the bush in my garden in Scotland and eat them as I was picking them. It's what we have evolved to do.
You have two different risks that you need to be evaluated here. One is that you are going to be exposed to someone's germs from handling the fruit and vegetables that you buy from the supermarket. The other is that if you keep covering your fruit and veg with antibacterial soap every day, not all of it will get rinsed off and you are ingesting chemicals which may build up in your body and over the course of a life time do some harm. Some people buy organic / bio food, grown naturally without artificial pesticides or fertilisers so they can cut down on their long term exposure to harmful chemicals.
Now unless someone has a medical condition which means that their immune system is compromised, we all have an immune system which needs to be regularly exposed to the latest germs so that it can adapt . We also come in contact with those germs in other ways. For example, those same pair of hands that touched the fruit and vegetables in the supermarket could also have used the same supermarket trolley that you were using. If we on average touch our face 2-4 times a minute (5,500 times a day) or have cut in our skin then that's another way that we can get those germs.
If someone is worried about becoming patient Zero with some new deadly disease because some bird with bird flu came in contact with a pig with swine flu and then came in contact with your fruit, yes it can happen but the chances of it happening to you are negligible compared to the risk of say developing cancer later on in life because of the build up of free radicals in your body from excessive daily exposure to harmful chemicals.
If for some reason a person does need to be particularly wary of contacting any germs, then perhaps it would be better to cook all fruit and vegetables or put them under a UV light? Cooking will destroy any germs. There is no need to cover in antibacterial soap as well.
From a Chef's point of view, a quick rinse with cold water is really all that is necessary to clean any produce.
Keep in mind that a very large portion of the fresh produce you probably eat came from Mexico, especially peppers. I was just in Nogales, Sonora yesterday on one of every two month shopping trips. Yes, I wash up with soap and water when I get home, just like I do whenever I shop around Tucson. I've never felt the need to use iodine or bleach just because I was in Mexico.
By the way, I know every once in a great while there will be a recall of produce from Mexico. But over the past few years, most of the recalls that come to my mind involved growers in California and Colorado (spinach, lettuce, cantaloupe, etc.).
You'll have no worries, just flush it down your throat with this 'cleanser' !
You'll have no worries, just flush it down your throat with this 'cleanser' !
WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
Free radicals from dish soap? Wouldn't the high vitamin C content (an antioxident) in peppers obliterate these dish soap spawned 'free radicals'?
Or you can eat lots of pepper and have all the anti oxidants working instead on removing the free radicals that wern't put there by covering your fruit in chemicals
Behind the label: Fairy Liquid
lol.. i just ate a piece of pie that got totally splattered on the floor.
i thought of this thread as i did so.
i thought of this thread as i did so.
Fairy Liquid is the leading brand in the UK although I have also found it being sold in Germany (I have a new bottle in my kitchen). Both Fairy Liquid and Dawn are made by Proctor & Gamble. I find it interesting that adverts often display pictures of clean dishes covered in bubbles and liquid detergent and so people don't make the effort to rinse their dishes afterwards. My mother-in-law never rinses her dishes afterwards and you can taste it when she gives you a cup of tea.
I can't find a break-down of the ingredients in the same way that I could for Fairy Liquid and it's worth bearing in mind that some of these ingredients can appear under different names. For example, when Aqua is listed, it's actually just water.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Ingredients_in_dawn_dish_soap
Triclosan, water, magnesium, sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate, ammonium laureth sulfate, lauryl polyglucose, lauramidopropylanine oxide, SD Alcohol 3A, sodium xylene sulfonate, sodium chloride, fragrance, pentasodium pentetate, sodium bisulfite, quaternium 15, D&C Orange 4
Not rinsing is new to me as well. We were exposed to commercials in the 70s from dish cleansing product manufacturers who stressed a need to rinse until all residue was gone. I suppose it became the cultural norm. Different countries have different standards for using chemicals/drugs/foods for ingestion. It seems that they can be lenient on what they deem to be "safe". It happens here in the states as well. Thanks for the info and good luck with your growing.
-Mark
-Mark