Washing is enough for me. I would not want to eat residues of chemicals on my salad. I think we're designed to eat a certain amount of germs and survive. Even when I had cancer, I didn't pay any special attention to that - having said that, someone with very poor health perhaps. I just don't know anyone who became ill from eating salad!

Although I diligently wash all fresh fruits and vegetables and I make sure I don't cross-contaminate raw meats with fresh on the cutting board, I often wonder how just washing in water can dispense with the bacteria/pathogens that might be on them. I mean, we wash our hands and dishes/cooking utensils, we use soap or disinfectants, but we don't use soap to clean our food. (At least I don't.) So really, how effective is it to wash the food in water. Again, I still plan to do it, but is it really that effective??

The simple answer is...not really. Washing may get rid of dirt and maybe some pathogens, but you really cannot wash well enough to get rid of all of them (especially if there's already a growing colony).

The most common culprit for contamination is fecal matter - especially for things that grow on the ground and for meat that is sold as a whole carcass (poultry for example). I know that seems strange or impossible to you, but it's really not. One of the biggest outbreaks of E-coli in the US was because of contaminated spinach - just a bunch of leaves were affected, but they were washed with uncontaminated leaves and that spread the pathogens.

Islay Corbel, of course not every pathogen makes us gravely ill. Sometimes it might be just a little diarrhea, otherwise a stomach ache, but if you ingest enough pathogens, it can be really nasty. At one point I had an E-coli infection and I honestly felt I was near death - I don't wish that on anyone. The problem is most times we can't pinpoint the culprit, so we don't think it's the food we ate - because most pathogens are invisible to the naked eye.

I just remembered about an experiment in regards to fecal contamination, I think it was made on board a Navy ship. The examining doctor smeared some UV powder in the anal region of sailors and never told them what it was. The next day they shone a UV light to see how much traces there were. And indeed there were: doorknobs, handrails and on their faces. This illustrates the perils of poor hand washing.

Just imagine how many people touch the food item you want to prepare and how long it has been sitting at a temperature that allows bacteria to multiply. The more people in the chain, and the longer it takes to get to you, the more chance of contaminants.

That's why the FDA's rule is to start from the premise that every item is contaminated and a 6.5D reduction in pathogens is needed for the food to be safe (although some scientists claim that a 4.5D reduction is enough).

1D is 90% of the initial population killed, 2D is 99% and 6.5D is 99.99997%

To achieve this 6.5D reduction, there are a few tables for common pathogens that take time and temperature in consideration. You don't need to overcook your chicken to 74 degrees Celsius to kill all the bugs, you can use a much lower temperature as long as you follow the death curve of pathogens (for a 6.5D reduction in Salmonella for example, a 55 degrees Celsius is enough as long as you keep the meat at that temperature for 1h and 31 minutes - this is for intact muscle where bacteria can only be present at the surface; for meat that has been ground or punctured in any way, the core temperature has to be 55 degrees and kept there for at least 39 min and 31s.)

I have found an excerpt from Modernist Cooking in regards to this topic, which you can read here if you are interested.

Actually my mom had a health scare once where her immune system was essentially off. She was dealing with a persistant UTI and she scared the heck out of her doctors. As a side note when we were leaving a drs appointment I asked a nurse something about eating. No raw anything - no salad no fruit no gardening no touching soil.. Luckily my mom recovered although she was very frustrated to not be able to garden.

Grainlady, is there a solution with clearer quantities (i.e. not "juice of half a lemon" which could produce varying quantities depending on the fruit's size)?

Can one use half a cup vinegar and 1 cup water? Just to simplify things?

What I do with fruits and vegetables is work in very small batches of 2 to 3. I work up a nice lather with scentless soapless soap, give the fruits/veg a quick rub and rinse immediately. It takes a few seconds if working in small batches. Never had food poisoning from produce I cleaned myself. Did have food poisoning from produce cleaned by others.

Grainlady, thanks for the info :) I did read somewhere about the vinegar and baking soda (another variant I've read about is vinegar followed by a 3% hydrogen peroxide spray), but no proportions (I really don't want to eyeball it). So would a 50% vinnegar 50% water work?

Modernist cuisine might offer a solution in this regard, but I didn't get there yet. I'll be sure to post my findings.

In the mean time, a solution with 0.4% Chlorine and water (4ml/l) is good for disinfecting kitchen tools and does not require rinsing and supposedly it does not affect taste of food. It does however require that you leave it on for at least 2 min. Never to be used on food tho.

A more concentrated solution (don't remember exactly, maybe 2%?!) does kill on contact but requires rinsing after.

Edit: Ha, found it! Here's what they say is good for reducing pathogens on produce: rinse with a solution of 10% cider vinegar. They also mention that some stores sell an organic solution made for this purpose.

So 50% vinegar solution should be more than enough (I do wonder however if it leaves any taste).

grainlady: while I can imagine that an actively foaming solution might be of potential value at that moment, it can't have any value sitting in a spray bottle. If I did my calculations correctly, a tablespoon of baking soda is almost twice as basic as a cup of vinegar is acetic and would therefore not only cancel the point of adding the vinegar, but some or all of the lemon as well. I admit that I was calculating from online facts including some that gave me 1T= 0.4 moles bicarbonate which seems high to my once trained eye.

FWIW, I soak berries and broccoli -- soft or nubby stuff -- in vinegar water about 2 minutes, then rinse and drain. I wash hard things like apples and even the citrus fruit in Dawn, lathering up my hands as I go. I also wash mushrooms, though I know a lot of folks do not. Salad greens are what scare me. I tend to buy it prewashed in bags, but I know that is no guarantee of anything. I have often thought maybe soaking greens in icy vinegar water and spinning gather might help? This is a great post. I just happened to see it while dropping by from Kitchen Forum. Thanks for starting it.

I can only share the information I found in the book about the produce spray, I don't have any more details than that. I would assume it's the pH of the spray that is killing bacteria as well as the cool water rinse (which also proved effective in the test), and it isn't about exact amounts as much as it is the pH of mixture.

wintercat - You are so right about the size of the lemon because I just processed and froze two "Dolly Parton" lemons my sister picked and sent from Texas and they are the size of grapefruit. (LOL)

Jo - Hydrogen Peroxide Spray is problematic due to the instability. It has a shelf-life of a year, but once the seal is broken on the bottle, the shelf-life is about 30-45 days. If you contaminate the bottle (dipping a swab or finger into the bottle), you can expect the effectiveness of the remaining liquid to be compromised. I just wouldn't trust it because of these issues.

-Grainlady

AFAIK Hydrogen Peroxide should always be stored in a dark or opaque bottle, preferably a spray bottle. Here I can only purchase 100ml bottles, so using them in 30-45 days is really not an issue.

Because of all the meals I plan and cook for the church....this is very interesting to me. Henceforth all salad greens will be vinegar washed.
But as an aside....you can't really believe how "relaxed" some are about kitchen cleanliness. I had one woman chopping un washed broccoli....because "you're going to cook it aren't you". I explained about pesticide residue. And I have to constantly remind not to put your purse on the counter where food is being prepped.

lindac92-

See if you can get some fact sheets through your County Extension Office for "Cooking for Groups". As Master Food Volunteers, we supplied all the churches in town with them, and provided classes if they wanted a food safety class. Here's a link for them:

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/cooking-for-groups-a-volunteers-guide-to-food-safety/ct_index1

-Grainlady

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. Just my personal opinions expressed here.

In my life, I have traveled to many areas where minimal modern sanitary considerations are applied to food safety and the general population in those areas have been very healthy nonetheless.

I only go to extremes with keeping everything hospital clean when I have to cook for others, not for myself. Liability concerns.

Regarding general cleaning sprays, "99.99% kill of all germs" means if the germs are in 100% contact with chemical. Unfortunately sprays can only cover 25% of the area,

Washing salad greens seldom gives you thorough good results because many greens' surfaces have micro cavities, hairy surfaces, crevices, nooks and crannies to trap air bubbles and germs. Ever noticed salad greens tends to float? An ultrasonic food cleaner can be much more effective.

It seems to me the modern food safety thinking has resulted in tougher and tougher germs, and weaker and weaker humans. We are loosing the war.

dcarch

I wash it in water. That's all. My old doctor told me we are "sanitizing ourselves sick" and that people don't get the opportunity to develop any immunities to anything because they aren't exposed to any pathogens at all.

I do have the benefit of raising my own organic vegetables and I don't hesitate to eat my grassfed beef raw. My salads are washed in water, root crops like carrots or beets are either scrubbed with a brush in water or peeled. I have to admit, though, that my salads rarely contain lettuce, I really don't like any of it.

Annie

Annie my practices when I am cooking for me and family are different than when I cook for a bunch of strangers.

I agree with Annie - it's overkill.

I'll try the dilute vinegar solution in the future. (Although I still do live by the old "if I just picked this berry or sugar snap pea in my yard and I haven't gotten into the house, I might take a snack" theory...)

I am with Annie on this. We need to get dirty more often not less. And I would definitely eat a fresh pea, tomato or berry before I get to the house.

I have worked in a huge greenhouse - and I would definitely be careful handling fresh food from the supermarket or walmart. The bathroom facilities were far away, poor to horrendous and the hand washing stations non-existent. And I was given much greater leeway to the bathroom than the most of my coworkers. Blech.

Annie1992's old doctor was very wise, I believe. We are sanitizing our selves sick. Yes, there are precautions that need to be taken, but I really do think that most people these days seem to OCD over sanitizing everything. Too much can be just as bad as too little, IMHO.

Rusty

LindaC, I'm careful when I'm feeding my small grandchildren (not that any of them would eat raw beef anyway, LOL), or elderly friends or someone who is immuno-compromised (like stepmom's sister who is on chemo). My grandbabies didn't get honey, I don't let them eat the cookie dough with raw eggs, etc.

Other than that, I'm a lot more worried about the goofy driver that might run into me on the way to the store than I am about the vegetables I might buy there.

Annie

* A handy reference on the amount of bacteria that you can kill at different temperatures and cooking times is here:

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/Oa/fr/95033f-a.htm?redirecthttp=true

* I clean raw foods mostly with just water. I try to at least get any obvious layer of bacterial material to wash off by feel under running water.

My general feeling on other techniques for cleaning raw food is that they either do far less than the people using them believe (e.g., vinegar will not kill many types of pathogenic bacteria) or for the ones that do work well - like oxygen bleach - I worry about ingesting that and killing off valuable gut micromes.

You have to balance all of these issues of safety and convenience, and it's really hard to do this accurately. I have chosen to go with convenience.

* I will confess that I eat a LOT of raw eggs and have never had a problem with them. Only in raw form do you get some of the nutritional advantages. This is by far my biggest food risk for pathogens. I have yet to get a single episode of indigestion. So even for high risk activities like this, the risks are actually pretty low.

* For reasons I have never understood, oysters - even well cooked - cause me to throw up. Always. I'm not sure if that is some bacteria that survives cooking or if that is some other chemical agent that cannot be cooked away.

Westes....ever consider that you are allergic to oysters?

@lindac92 I guess I always thought of allergic reactions as being respiratory. I definitely am sensitive to many foods, like gluten, but when I eat those they digest and just make me feel ill. Or some foods just won't digest. The oysters reaction is something unique. It is the only food that completely insists on coming back out the way it came in. :) I suppose that oysters might contain something I am so allergic to that the body treats it as life threatening and forces this reaction. I don't know enough about possible ways allergy can manifest.

I'm happy to see this thread brought back.

Allergic reactions usually present as itching or hives or rashes.

Food poisoning can vary.

Regarding oysters, they grow in brackish estuarine waters and there are some organisms that can cause food poisoning and make humans very ill, depending on the individual's immune system. One of these is Vibrio vulnificus

and you can read more about it here

http://www.newsweek.com/what-vibrio-vulnificus-and-should-you-be-concerned-347673 

and here: https://www.cdc.gov/vibrio/index.html

I always wash salad greens in two water baths, while swishing. After the final bath, I spin dry. (I keep the salad spinner clean). I always wash the bagged "pre-washed" greens because who knows what sort or water they were rinsed with or how well; or what was done after the wash, or the health and habits of the worker washing them. I've heard people say they trust the producer's washing. No thanks.

I wash vegetables and use a scrub brush. Sometimes, I rinse after peeling.

I witness so many bad practices on cooking shows, I write them tons of letters -- in my head.

I wash veggies and fruits with skins (apples, oranges, green peppers, etc.) with soap and water using a soft brush, rinse with water. I run water over and into greens and other items but after last night (broccoli rinsed well still had some kind of oily substance on it that kinda freaked me out!) I'm going to rinse more thoroughly. I clean all veggies and fruits when I first get home with them, before putting in the fridge.

I clean off red meats with a paper towel soaked in vinegar (mom did it, so I still do) and rinse, pat dry.

I never buy the mixed greens in a bag, or pre-sliced mushrooms, just because that's too hard to wash.

I also wash with soap and water all cans, especially the tops. Someone years ago said they'd seen mouse droppings sitting on the cases of cans in the back of the store... Gross.

In my own garden I'd still wash everything... although I have bitten off a bit of herb, or eaten a blackberry that's not been washed. Probably shouldn't, due to possible wildlife contamination.

I confess that very few snap peas ever make it from the garden and into the house to be washed. Anyway, I figure that if it rained last night, those peas have already been washed and no sense in me wasting wash water on them.

Comment about the broccoli reminds me of the time I ordered broccoli in a restaurant and the flowerets were full of sand. Obviously did not get washed. Maybe rinsed but not thoroughly washed. On the up side, at least it was fresh broccoli and not the frozen stuff.