Wash Your Hands, Fruits and Vegetables!
The handwashing message has been widely shared. According to food safety experts, washing fruits and veggies is also important, to help reduce the risk of spreading bacteria and other pathogens that can cause disease.
It is advisable to wash ALL fruits and vegetables before you eat them to ensure they are clean.
The Food and Drug Administration, which has the responsibility of ensuring that the food we eat is safe for human consumption, recommends 4 key steps of food safety—clean, separate, cook, and chill – to prevent foodborne illness.
An article from the Harvard School of Public Health offers the suggestion that “Because of the limited ability of coronavirus to survive on surfaces, the easiest way to minimize risk of infection from foods purchased at a store or delivered to your home is just let it sit in an out-of-the way place for three days. Of course, this won’t work for foods that need immediate refrigeration or freezing. Note that COVID-19 is an “enveloped virus,” meaning that it is covered in an oily membrane. Fortunately, plain soap is very effective at disrupting the oil on surfaces, and water is effective at removing and rinsing away the virus”
The CDC’s “Steps to Safe and Healthy Fruits and Vegetables” provides recommendations for washing produce.
Epicurious reviewed options for washing produce, including tap water, homemade solutions, and commercially available washes. They conclude, “Distilled water is cheap, vinegar is also cheap, tap water is cheaper, and a vegetable brush is a small investment that'll help your cause, if only just a bit. And that's really all you need to clean produce.”
