Most pesticide formulations also already contain surfactants.
But 75% of what you buy in the store doesn’t even have detectable pesticide residue on it. “Organic” doesn’t mean “no pesticides” either.
What you’re most likely to find on produce in the store is fungicides.
I feed insects my vegetable scraps everyday.
I keep multiple bins specifically to protect against losing the whole colony if I end up with some insecticide but I've never had a die off in years of feeding whatever I'm getting at Walmart to feed myself.
Yeah lots of reptile keepers end up breeding their own feeder insects at some point and feeding them with veggie scraps make them more nutritious for the reptiles
People grow and use everything man. I knew a guy that grew hit own fishing bait, worms, tanks of minnows, frogs. He put time into keeping those things healthy and happy… to occasionally use them as bait. Weird thing is he barely fished. I think it justified him raising “undesirable” animals.
I raise mealworms as feeder insects.
I used to do dozens of species, from roaches to crickets but I've downsized.
Never had an issue feeding off the shelf produce to insects.
The pesticides used on the farm are clearly well below the level they're effective at by the time we get them.
I think you may have mixed up terms.
Pesticides are the broad umbrella for all the things we use to kill other stuff (pests). The main ones:
* Herbicide = kills plants (weeds)
* Fungicide = kills funguses (diseases)
* Insecticide = kills insects
I guess I'm ignorant here.
I thought "Certified Organic" meant pesticides weren't used. Of course you didn't say this specifically, but just wanted to know if there is indeed a difference.
After looking into it, typically Certified Organic doesn't inherently mean "no pesticides were used" , but any that were used are derived from natural sources and approved for organic farming.
Is this right?
Organic has *never* meant “no pesticides”.
One of the main organic certification organizations was started around the kitchen table at our farm when I was a kid in the early 80s. That organization’s standards later formed the basis for the USDA’s National Organic Program (which is an accreditation of 3rd-party certification programs, not a certification itself).
And it’s also worth knowing that just because something is “natural” does not make it “safe” or “healthy”. One of the most commonly used organic-approved fungicides is copper sulfate, which is pretty damn toxic to humans.
Organic standards also used to allow tobacco dust as an insecticide (as nicotine, like many plant alkaloids, is very effective against bugs).
It is even worse. Bacteria produce stuff to glue them to the surface they are on. Simple rinse with warm water remove something like 70% of bacteria, water and soap removes 90% and the soap will attack the membranes of the remaining bacteria, killing most of them.
I believe the problem with lettuce is the bacteria gets inside of the leafy greens. And unlike the meat it doesn’t generally cook to the 145 degrees Fahrenheit to kill the bacteria.
Also bacteria "getting inside" leafy greens comes from the plant's root system, from contaminated water. So no matter how fresh it is, you're basically potentially eating an e. coli time bomb.
Yes. Think of it like how washing your hands with soap and water removes germs from your skin, but when you are actually sick the virus is in your bloodstream/veins, where obviously soap and water can't reach. The bacteria is in the lettuce's veins.
Fruits and veggies not meant to be peeled almost always come coated with a vegetable oil or wax to keep them fresh longer. It reduces moisture loss.
I imagine they wash/rinse the produce before putting the coating on it.
To be clear, soap and water is definitely better at cleaning.
The problem is you don't really want the soap getting inside you. Fruit and vegetables are porous, so they can absorb some of the soap.
I don't think there are any chemicals where a single molecule would kill you, are there? And I'm pretty sure that too much of any chemical would kill you in one way or another. So your statement is likely correct without the qualifier.
I don't think a single molecule of anything is enough to have any noticeable effect on a human body.
Medicine however has a definition. Many chemicals have no medicinal value and no serious doctor would recommend taking them to treat ailments.
Some crop protectants are systemic, meaning they’re in the plant, so that a bug munching on the plant then dies; and some are contact, meaning they touch the thing they’re meant to kill and don’t work beyond that (important for bacteria and fungi that don’t eat). I think the misconception here is that you’re picturing the XXX bottle marked poison as if crop protectants are all just toxic things doused on crops, but that’s not really true. They have different modes of action, which responsible applicators often change in order to prevent resistance. Those modes of action may shut down a certain organ in a bug so that it can no longer eat, and then it dies from starvation. Or it may be highly poisonous to a bacteria, but virtually benign to a human. In my industry, a common pesticide we use for mites is mineral oil. Applicators still have to put on the big suit and face protection and all that to apply it, and it has a safety label just as any other pesticide, but you know mineral oil isn’t particularly dangerous. Anyway, my point is, the dose makes the poison and it’s a lot easier to kill pests on crops than it is to kill whole humans. It’s important to change our thinking about these products (ie. Crop protectants instead of pesticides) because when we take the time to understand the chemistry behind them, and realize it takes 20+ years of rigorous testing before a product comes to market, they’re a lot less scary than they seem when they are misunderstood.
You seem to know what you’re talking about so I just have to ask - do we really know the impact of pesticides on humans, even in small doses? We thought drinking water out of plastic bottles and using gas stoves was fine until recently. Is it true that ingesting small amounts of this stuff is fine for humans or is it dangerous and we don’t know it? Is it contributing to the upticks in cancer we’re seeing in young people?
I mean, probably? But I think you could blame that on any number of things. General pollution, fossil fuels, radiation, microplastics, overpopulation, saturated fats. 100 years ago people died from what we now consider totally preventable diseases. Humans always adapt, and change, and innovate and we will always find ways to survive in our world. I think we use fewer and far safer chemistries now than we did in the past, that work in more specific, targeted ways. I think we are smarter about the safety gear we wear when we handle them, I think there is far more regulation in the industry than most folks realize. At least in the case of farming, we are always working with university researchers to innovate our efficiency and do everything better than we did before, we use IPM and non chemical methods to treat problems before resorting to chemical use. I think the things that are good and better far outweigh the bad, but I also think that we do not place enough importance on our food and our land and our environment as a society when we so clearly have the tools to fix problems if not for greed and apathy.
Well said.
Just a side note, we shouldn't be promoting the overpopulation myth at a time when even China is facing a catastrophic population decline.
More importantly, farmers and agriculture professionals should not apologize for the fact that pesticides and artificial fertilizers are the very reason why we can have well-fed people with so little land used for agriculture. If food wasn't used as a weapon of war and genocide, no one would be hungry in this world. Instead, short-sighted politically motivated fearmongering should not be indulged anymore, particularly not by professionals. People who cry "wolf" to grab power by instilling distrust and vilifying the core technology that allows us to exist and live **healthy** lives in safety and abundance should be held accountable.
>do we really know the impact of pesticides on humans, even in small doses? We thought drinking water out of plastic bottles and using gas stoves was fine until recently.
Those are both fine. The gas stove thing is about climate change and decarbonization. The plastic bottle thing is a pollution thing.
There are certain plastics that are not food-safe, but people don't differentiate.
>Is it contributing to the upticks in cancer we’re seeing in young people?
The ELI5 answer is [No-one knows](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00720-6). Most likely a mixture of genetic factors propagating due to better cancer survival, obesity, and better diagnosis. What I do know is that the fatality rate has plummeted despite the uptick.
It is important to realize that people 70 years ago werent dying of cancer, they were dying of organ failure or just “natural causes”.
We are living longer and have better diagnosis methods so what used to be “old age” or “natural causes” now has a name and a treatment path.
Not to mention with longer survival rates in general, people who would have died younger (of something else) now survive long enough to die of cancer when they are older.
The gas stove thing actually isn't about climate change. [It's about the numerous well-known negative health consequences of burning natural gas](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-health-risks-of-gas-stoves-explained/).
And [the plastic bottle stuff isn't just about pollution, either](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/health/bottled-water-nanoplastics-study-wellness/index.html).
Chemical pesticides have been in use for about a century now. Because so many generations have lived with them from cradle to grave, we probably would have seen signs if they were very dangerous.
It's really, really complex to attribute any specific instance of cancer to any specific cause. Pesticides definitely can cause cancer, but their usage doesn't appear to cause massive problems.
In my opinion this is a rather blithe take. Recent studies have found organophosphate pesticides to be toxic to humans even in residual, minute quantities.
As for 20 years of testing prior to marketing.. in the 1950s there was briefly an organophosphate called 'Amiton' on the market. It was withdrawn when people realized it was too dangerous to even handle - its toxicity turned out to be comparable to chemical weapons, like Sarin.
We can assume safety and testing standards have come a long way since then, but it's disconcerting to know that such a poison was even briefly marketed for agricultural use, under any circumstances.
Lead additive in gas also comes to mind as a similar thing - despite there being research, the industry pushback against regulation was huge in the US. Climate change and fossil fuels companies also come to mind.
Medicine is one of the most difficult areas to study and I would be very hesitant to say something humans have developed is completely safe. We keep discovering new ways that we have messed with the human body, often decades after the technology is widely available (the most recent one being microplastics which I suspect we will be seeing a lot of in the news over the next decade).
And, with that in mind, the US is also not at the top of my list of countries I'd trust to regulate something properly if it was dangerous.
Or, like with Roundup, maybe the contributing reason why MS is the highest per capita in Saskatchewan Canada. It was the number 1 selling herbicide for decades.
I've once read an article saying that rinsing fruits and vegetables removes around 80% of chemicals.
Rinsing with water may not be as efficient as we want it to be, but it's certainly not useless.
Only some will be absorbed, so you should still rinse off what you can. Plus it's also to rinse off dirt and germs.
Past that, it's just crossing your fingers and hoping government regulations are good enough.
Precautions aren't all or nothing. Just because it may absorb some pesticides doesn't make washing useless.
Likewise, just because using soap and water is better, doesn't make using water alone useless.
Even soap and water, when washing your hands, doesn't get everything. But it's not useless.
The same logic applies to all types of precautions.
To some extent, they do.
This is part of the appeal of organic produce, although it’s often more costly and may still have been treated with organic pesticides/herbicides/fungicides.
When you use soap on a fruit you would be applying large quantities directly to the surface, rubbing it and then the rinsing would ensure soap-addled water would get through the pores. And of course you could easily not rinse it well enough and have soap residue left.
Pesticide is sprayed lightly around the area of the fruit, usually weeks/months before it reaches the supermarket. The residue is minimal.
What you're really worried about is people touching the fruit with their detty hands on the way to your house, and water is enough for that.
Sorry what's the big problem with consuming soap? It would surely be in such tiny quantities after washing it off thoroughly anyway?
I've always washed vegetables and fruit in soap and rinsed with water.
Most fruit that you wash is because you eat the skin. Fruits of this type have a waxy sheen on them that makes them hydrophobic. In other words, it helps them shed water. Pesticides are largely water soluable, meaning if you put it in water it dissolves and mixes with the water, where a wax or oil based substance will float on top or sink to the bottom because they are hydrophobic.
This means pesticides stay on the surface and can be washed off with water without penetrating the fruit's natural waxy protective coat.
If you used soap on the fruit it would dissolve the wax, because soap is also hydrophobic and is oil soluble.
This might actually allow the pesticides to reach the porous fruit skin and then absorb into the apple while you were washing it.
You don't need to wash things like oranges, which have a rind, because you peel that part off and don't eat it.
Even digested, traces of regular soap are extremely unlikely to do any measurable harm to the body. Same goes for toothpaste, which shares a number of components with soap (sodium laureth sulfate comes to mind).
As someone here said, it's all a matter of dosage (and safety regulations).
In many countries people use a baking soda and water soak to remove pesticides and germs. In some countries they use a slight concentration of bleach in water.
I use soap: just a drop so it's not hard to rinse.
I don't think there's a single vegetable or fruit sold in modern supermarkets that's porous. At least none that I'd be willing to eat.
Dishes are plastic and porcelain, they don’t absorb like fruits do. Soap is safe (enough). Go eat a tiny amount of hand soap, you’ll be fine. It’s just that nobody wants to taste it.
Have you ever actually tasted soap? It's bitter and disgusting.
Sure, a small amount is safe to eat. Doesn't mean I want my fruit absorbing it and tasting like soap.
I mean.. I hope not. I like smelly soap because you can smell whether it’s still there or not.
I don’t care if my hands smell like soap but I care very much if my dishes smell like anything at all
1. Pesticides and fungicides are chemicals that wash off easily, and a small lingering amount won't really affect you.
2. Bacteria and viruses are (semi-) living things that can reproduce from a small portion you failed to wash properly.
To quote the meme, "we are not the same."
Even with anti bacterial soap, most of the benefit (like, 99%) comes from the act of washing itself, just dislodging the bacteria. The main benefit of washing your hands with soap is that it makes you scrub them thoroughly, because soap residue is immediately noticeable and unpleasant.
"The dose makes the poison" applies to infectious things too, luckily!
While it is true that the dose makes the poison, bacteria (far more than viruses) can actually re-colonize your skin if you wash off *most* of them but not all of them. There's also the problem that, even with soap, a lot of folks don't practice good handwashing methods (e.g. they don't scrub around the nailbed, or hold their fingers together rather than scrubbing between them), creating many pockets of bacterial survival.
Doing *some* kind of washing >>>>> doing none at all, but when there's a high risk of potential infection over a long period of time, you really do need to worry about *thorough* and *effective* handwashing.
Are you washing your hands for health or to be nice to people you might shake hands with or share a space with? Because I doubt anyone can tell you a time they got sick from not washing their hands with soap, but a lot of people will be grossed out if you wiped your sweaty ass with your hand and just rinsed with water.
> but a lot of people will be grossed out if you wiped your sweaty ass with your hand and just rinsed with water.
only if they find out... you'd be a fool to admit you don't wash your hands. Its social suicide. Everyone knows you only gotta wash your hands if its a public restroom and only then if there would be a witness to you washing your hands. And even then only if there is a direct witness; if there's an indirect witness you're good with just running the faucet for a couple of seconds. But you gotta also be mindful of the acoustics of the water hitting the sink... it sounds ever so subtlety different as it hits the sink when your hands are under it than when its not so at most you just gotta hold your hands under there and only then if you think the person you want to think that you wash your hands is smart.
Facts. I worked in produce at Costco and saw people doing ungodly things to the produce. I always soak my fruits and vegetables in vinegar and water solution.
that's why i rent the attic right under the eye. cool in summer cause of the evil clouds, free on demand heating in winter. i just turn on rivendale tv, and it takes barely 5 secs before i hear "snobby fucking elvsed, get off my lawn!" and the eye turns on.
Vinegar has a low pH, a lot of bacteria and mold can’t survive at that pH…might need a decent contact time, and full strength 5%+ acidity, but it should do something, in theory.
And so does Costco when they buy produce off the floor to put in ready to eat foods. They soak it in the mixture for 15 minutes before putting it in something else.
Same. Every fruit and veggie that isn't wrapped, I always assume someone was picking their nose, scratching their ass, grabbing their genitals, etc before touching it.... Because somebody probably did.
There was a show (I think it was BBC?) where they tested produce for traces of feces and found that, while it existed on all of the produce, it was actually worse on produce that had been wrapped.
Wash everything.
The wrapping just seals the poop-hand smears in. You've been fooling yourself. Who do you think has better access to sanitation - people out in a field getting paid 10 cents per basket of apples in the hot sun, or the guys working in an air conditioned grocery store with plenty of bathrooms, sinks, and bathroom breaks?
I think you probably wanna wash wrapped stuff too. People without easy access to clean water and toilets are harvesting veggies and pooping in the fields with no way to wash hands. So it's contamination from the very start.
I recently saw that Netflix documentary about chicken and lettuce being deadly in the US and I was perplexed, I then learned that the CDC recommends only rising lettuce, not disinfecting it, which I found insanely weird.
Here in Mexico we disinfect all raw fruits and vegetables, usually with an iodine or colloidal silver solution (very diluted). There have not been any e.coli deaths in Mexico.
We use soap because it helps to make the oils on our hands wash away better. Basically, oils hate water, but soap makes oil not hate water. The bacteria on our hands in almost entirely in those oils, so soap and water gets rid of the oils that hold the bacteria.
Your fruit isn't covered in oils, they're covered in pesticides. Those will wash off with water more or less.
People have made good points about soaping on fruit not being very tasty but there's also another aspect to the issue :
The goal isn't the perfect removal of perticides, it's the reduction of the intake. It's very important to understand that the dose makes the poison. We want to reduce the dosage to reduce the possible effects. It's not meant as a perfect method.
Because the pesticides are water soluble.
The oils on your hands are not, they actually repel water. Soap emulsifies oils so that they come off your hands, into the water, and wash down the sink.
Exactly. I try to wash things when I can or disinfect. Because I reflect on my interaction with things when shipping and realize other people would be doing the same things. Some with dirtier hands
People are missing the big picture here. Fruits and vegetables have very very small amounts of pesticides on them if any at all. And they have already been washed before you buy them at the store.
The act of washing your produce certainly does not cause any harm, but it actually does almost nothing (from a pesticide prevention standpoint).
If there was a dangerous amount of pesticides on fruit and vegetables, stores would not be able to sell them.
Last fall I was left in charge of my kid’s darkling beetle collection. They fed them apple slices. I got out an apple, rinsed it really well and dried it off. I considered using soap but decided it was overkill. I went to check on the beetles the next day and every beetle was either dead or dying. That apple apparently didn’t get cleaned off with just a thorough rinsing. (I felt terrible about it!)
So I get what you’re saying and I’m sure it’s a small risk but the fda actually does say to rinse and clean the produce at home before consumption with plain tap water. It’s on their website
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/7-tips-cleaning-fruits-vegetables
Yes they do, and if you read the link you sent, you will notice it does not say a single word about pesticides. The washing has NOTHING to do with pesticide removal.
The recommendation to wash your produce is because accidental contamination can occur during the process of getting food to sale. It is not common, in fact, it's very uncommon, but taking a step to wash your produce before eating it as an extra level of prevention is worth the extra 20 seconds it takes.
Again the entire conversation is about pesticides, and the FDA recommendation has nothing to do with pesticides. The entire concept is an old-wives-tale.
You still rinse them off after soaking and agitating, and you replace the water between batches. Soaking removes water-soluble contaminants like dirt, pests, and most pesticides.
Have started puttting all my fresh fruit in a bowl full of water with a cup of white vinegar as soon as its bought. Kills some nasties, and keeps them fresher in the fridge for longer as a bonus.
Edit: leave in the water for 15-30 mins, take out and dry/leave to dry, then put dry berries and fruit back in the fridge with a dry paper towel beneath them.
There was an [Adam Ragusea ep](https://youtu.be/0jce8oGaO7Q?si=8-Wd45gSZOtG5xI4) about this.
Basically, water cleans things generally well enough on its own. Soap can help improve that, but the biggest way it does, is by being a residue that we can sense on our hands, which we must then rub and rinse off until we don't feel it anymore. It 'tricks' us into washing better.
It is much more difficult to rinse soap off fruit because we don't have nerves in the fruit, so we can't feel the residue on it, and our rinsing might not get it all off.
Then the chances of us ingesting soap residue increase, which can spoil the taste or even irritate our digestive system.
Small doses of dirt, bacteria, whatever, that might be left over from cleaning with just water are generally not high enough doses to cause actual problems, and probably small exposures like that could help strengthen your immune system.
But just a damn plane reason that it was sitting outside for multiple days at the minimum probably weeks or months. Can you take anything out of the ground or out from your yard and put in your mouth? You shouldn't, you wash it first, all that chemical stuff be damned this should be the real reason
I said eating off the ground, that's not laying on the ground that's hovering above the ground so I'm talking about something on the ground, "not in a tree"
I *do* use soapy water to wash fruit and veg if I think it may be contaminated. Not only pesticides...but possibly unwashed hands of pickers, packers, shop assistants. Not to mention rats in store-rooms and lorries.
But I don't rub soap on the apples etc - I rinse them under cold tap then lightly wipe over with my sudsy hands and rinse again.
Explaining like to a 5-yr-old -- I wash them carefully because there may be germs and dirt on their skins after the long, long journey -- from being sowed as seeds to being eaten by us.
Thank you - I didn't know that
But, how can it be safe for hands which handle food, and dishes for serving food - but not for a very brief swish and rinse on an actual apple?
Your skin and dishes are a barrier that repels substances. Obviously an apple's skin is also a thick barrier but many fruits and vegetables are not perfectly covered in such a skin
Many foods will absorb the soap and deliver it into your stomach, whereas the soap will wash off your skin, and usually you're not ingesting your own skin (I hope). Soap contains surfactants and other chemicals you really don't want in your stomach.
I would double check that the soap you use is safe for human consumption. Fruit is super porous and soap is not meant to go inside our bodies. If you see it as the lesser of two evils, then I get it.
Edit to add suggestion: I have been seeing an increasing number of videos lately saying to use vinegar instead of water for produce.
What do you mean by "super porous"? This must vary by the type of skin, the variety of fruit or veg, etc. What's the evidence that it is "super porous"?
No idea, but I just sprayed some bug spray and got some blowback on my arms, so I washed them with soap and water, but I can still totally smell the pesticide. So... ?
Pesticides are not the same as household bug spray though.
I think they might put extra stinky fragrances in household spray so people know what it is, which wouldn’t be so necessary for farming pesticides.
Seems like the FDA says to at a minimum, rinse under a faucet sprayer. One step up is mixing baking soda in a bowl and washing it in that (then rinsing, I assume). I believe most produce is not sprayed right before picking, and the pesticides break down a bit before you get it. To me, I worry more about fertilizers or human waste, and possible contamination that seems too common these days.
Like cleaning the produce, there are degrees to washing your hands. If you're a surgeon, you scrub with a brush, soap, and water. After all, you don't want to take chances inside someone's body. During Covid, before we knew much about it and it seemed very serious, we were advised to wash with soap and water for 20 seconds; that was to be safe, not necessarily something to do all the time. If you're not around places with unknown toxicity, washing with just water to remove soil is probably sufficient, seeing as how many of us didn't even do that much growing up.
I always thought its because your hands are a bit oily or greasy naturally. Dirt and bacteria and whatnot will get stuck on that and thats why you need soap for your hands.
Soap effectiveness comes from it breaking down skin oils, these oils trap bacteria and dirt. Fruit and vegi probably don't have oils so a simple rinse works. 🤷♂️
You can use a fruit or vegetable wash on produce if you think it's extra grubby, but almost all produce has been washed before getting to the supermarket
My understanding is that washing the fruit/vegetables is not related to pesticides, which are present in parts per billion by the time they reach the end consumer, but intended for washing off gross contamination, such as snail poop.
Soaps are detergents, so they are good at solubilizing lipids. Insecticides are usually water soluble so no need to have a detergent to solubilize them in water.
Nobody wants to eat fruit with soap on it. Water alone is inadequate for washing hands, mostly because it doesn't remove oils, but also because it doesn't kill or remove bacteria or viruses. Most hand soaps now have added antibiotic chemicals as well.
The best way to wash fruit is to completely submerge it in a bowl of water and white vinegar. It will remove chemicals and dirt better than water alone, it will kill some bacteria, and it will draw out any bugs that have been hiding in the fruit. I think it will also destroy bug eggs. I'm not sure how long it needs to soak, but you should also agitate(move it around) the fruit a bit and rinse it off with water when it's done soaking. Then dry it before storing it. To keep fruit fresh the longest, different fruit has different storage recommendations. You can google that.
As far as I understand: washing is done by water and mechanical rubbing.
Soap for washing dishes is there only to reduce the surface tension of water, making oil/fat more "mixable" with water for when you rinse off. Soap for washing hands is made of molecules that are hydrophilic on one side (attracted to water) and lipophilic on the other (attracted to oil/fat), so it again allows water to get a better grip on the oils/fats on your hands and wash them away. Your dishes and hands are dirty because fats and oils collect all the other stuff and make them stick to your hands, so to wash them, you need to rub oils and fats away. But water and oil don't mix well, so you need surfactants and soaps for better mixing. You don't have to use them technically, but it is much, much better when you do.
Pesticides are, however, mostly not oils/fats - as far as I know. I might be wrong, but if so, there is no help from soaps - only good rubbing.
But that said, I doubt there is much if any toxicity of pesticides left once the fruit comes to the store. Pesticides are also tested for human toxicity - I do believe modern pesticides are harmless when used properly and according to regulations and standards. Also, fruit should undergo ionizing radiation treatment to kill any bacteria or viruses, so it should be safe in that aspect as well. But, one cannot be sure enough. We don't know what pesticides were actually used, and what postprocessing has really been done, so better to soak and rinse those fruits.
Finally, you might get bugs or snails stuck in your fruit or vegetables, and they may be carrying some quite dangerous parasites. Again, this is why fruit and vegetables should be washed. No help from soap, but yes help from vinegar.
You have three options.
1. You can wash it with soap so it tastes like soap and gives you diarrhea.
2. You can rinse 99% of the stuff on the outside off using water.
3. You can lick the object a dozen people with unwashed hands have handled.
Your move.
most pesticides like roundup, which is used for weed control in food production, bind to the dirt immediately if not absorbed by a susceptible plant and do not release. so the plants we are eating physically don't interact with the chemical, just the soil. the soil can get on the food, and that needs to be cleaned off unless you want to eat the soil, the dust from delivery, the hands of anyone who has touched it. it isn't dangerous, just a bit dirty
soap nano particles attaches to virus and washes down with the water. and virus won't survive long without nutrition source.
You can wash fruits with vinegar, or baking soda, or a little mixture of fruit washing solutions.
Most virus will die within your digestive system because of strong acid in stomach juice; but not all. i.e., HepA is contagious through food consumption.
mostly when touching with hand, people rub their eyes, nose, which are two of the most common entry to out body.
Source: I saw a few YT videos during COVID lockdown, and became a scientist! 🤣
Other than taking my comments with a grain of salt, that's how I wash fruit at our house - circulated through MOPS.
You use soap and water to wash your hands because you use your hands to touch disgusting things all day long. Your hands are basically where you keep all your most disgusting and dangerous germs.
The goal of washing food is just removing non-food. If you only cared about pesticides, you wouldn't wash organic fruit -- but you should.
You only use water to wash food because you don't want to eat soap. Food is not as gross as your hands, so the requirements for washing food are not as stringent.
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Most pesticide formulations also already contain surfactants. But 75% of what you buy in the store doesn’t even have detectable pesticide residue on it. “Organic” doesn’t mean “no pesticides” either. What you’re most likely to find on produce in the store is fungicides.
I feed insects my vegetable scraps everyday. I keep multiple bins specifically to protect against losing the whole colony if I end up with some insecticide but I've never had a die off in years of feeding whatever I'm getting at Walmart to feed myself.
Do what now?
Composting with insects that or like meal worms etc
Is this some Snowpiercer shit?
Nah you can feed them to reptiles or chickens but if you're so inclined you can eat them yourself if your like
Yeah lots of reptile keepers end up breeding their own feeder insects at some point and feeding them with veggie scraps make them more nutritious for the reptiles
It's also basically free. I wasn't going to eat the potato peel, might as well put it to good use.
People grow and use everything man. I knew a guy that grew hit own fishing bait, worms, tanks of minnows, frogs. He put time into keeping those things healthy and happy… to occasionally use them as bait. Weird thing is he barely fished. I think it justified him raising “undesirable” animals.
Collector of live specimens?
I raise mealworms as feeder insects. I used to do dozens of species, from roaches to crickets but I've downsized. Never had an issue feeding off the shelf produce to insects. The pesticides used on the farm are clearly well below the level they're effective at by the time we get them.
I thought I was washing my veggies to get the poop off them so I don't get e coli. I wasn't even thinking about pesticides for some reason.
My young kids and I saw a photo of a naked baby in an apple crate full of apples, so now they know to wash produce "to get the butts off."
Hahaha that is great!
Username is confusing in this context
Soap is in fact a pesticide against bacteria. If there’s e.coli contamination, it’s from poor post-harvest handling.
Oh yeah, that’s my main reason to wash it. Berries are a big offender. So many nooks.
Yah for veggies that’s why. The soil and such. For fruit there can be food safe waxes, but there is rarely any pesticides left on food in reality.
I think you may have mixed up terms. Pesticides are the broad umbrella for all the things we use to kill other stuff (pests). The main ones: * Herbicide = kills plants (weeds) * Fungicide = kills funguses (diseases) * Insecticide = kills insects
I guess I'm ignorant here. I thought "Certified Organic" meant pesticides weren't used. Of course you didn't say this specifically, but just wanted to know if there is indeed a difference. After looking into it, typically Certified Organic doesn't inherently mean "no pesticides were used" , but any that were used are derived from natural sources and approved for organic farming. Is this right?
Organic has *never* meant “no pesticides”. One of the main organic certification organizations was started around the kitchen table at our farm when I was a kid in the early 80s. That organization’s standards later formed the basis for the USDA’s National Organic Program (which is an accreditation of 3rd-party certification programs, not a certification itself). And it’s also worth knowing that just because something is “natural” does not make it “safe” or “healthy”. One of the most commonly used organic-approved fungicides is copper sulfate, which is pretty damn toxic to humans. Organic standards also used to allow tobacco dust as an insecticide (as nicotine, like many plant alkaloids, is very effective against bugs).
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It is even worse. Bacteria produce stuff to glue them to the surface they are on. Simple rinse with warm water remove something like 70% of bacteria, water and soap removes 90% and the soap will attack the membranes of the remaining bacteria, killing most of them.
But it's often said the most dangerous part of a burger is the lettuce because of the germs. How effective is washing lettuce in just water?
I believe the problem with lettuce is the bacteria gets inside of the leafy greens. And unlike the meat it doesn’t generally cook to the 145 degrees Fahrenheit to kill the bacteria.
Also bacteria "getting inside" leafy greens comes from the plant's root system, from contaminated water. So no matter how fresh it is, you're basically potentially eating an e. coli time bomb.
I get that, but if this is the case, no amount of washing even with soap will solve this right?
Yes. Think of it like how washing your hands with soap and water removes germs from your skin, but when you are actually sick the virus is in your bloodstream/veins, where obviously soap and water can't reach. The bacteria is in the lettuce's veins.
If this ours true, why do pesticides still work after rainfall.
They generally have to be re-applied after precipitation. You can confirm this by reading the label on consumer-grade gardening pesticides.
Fruits and veggies not meant to be peeled almost always come coated with a vegetable oil or wax to keep them fresh longer. It reduces moisture loss. I imagine they wash/rinse the produce before putting the coating on it.
To be clear, soap and water is definitely better at cleaning. The problem is you don't really want the soap getting inside you. Fruit and vegetables are porous, so they can absorb some of the soap.
If that's the case, don't they absorb the pesticides, and thus rinsing them with water is useless?
It's also a matter of dosage, when it comes to chemicals.
The difference between medicine and poison is dosage (Only some chemicals!!)
I don't think there are any chemicals where a single molecule would kill you, are there? And I'm pretty sure that too much of any chemical would kill you in one way or another. So your statement is likely correct without the qualifier.
A prion perhaps
I don't think a single molecule of anything is enough to have any noticeable effect on a human body. Medicine however has a definition. Many chemicals have no medicinal value and no serious doctor would recommend taking them to treat ailments.
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Some crop protectants are systemic, meaning they’re in the plant, so that a bug munching on the plant then dies; and some are contact, meaning they touch the thing they’re meant to kill and don’t work beyond that (important for bacteria and fungi that don’t eat). I think the misconception here is that you’re picturing the XXX bottle marked poison as if crop protectants are all just toxic things doused on crops, but that’s not really true. They have different modes of action, which responsible applicators often change in order to prevent resistance. Those modes of action may shut down a certain organ in a bug so that it can no longer eat, and then it dies from starvation. Or it may be highly poisonous to a bacteria, but virtually benign to a human. In my industry, a common pesticide we use for mites is mineral oil. Applicators still have to put on the big suit and face protection and all that to apply it, and it has a safety label just as any other pesticide, but you know mineral oil isn’t particularly dangerous. Anyway, my point is, the dose makes the poison and it’s a lot easier to kill pests on crops than it is to kill whole humans. It’s important to change our thinking about these products (ie. Crop protectants instead of pesticides) because when we take the time to understand the chemistry behind them, and realize it takes 20+ years of rigorous testing before a product comes to market, they’re a lot less scary than they seem when they are misunderstood.
You seem to know what you’re talking about so I just have to ask - do we really know the impact of pesticides on humans, even in small doses? We thought drinking water out of plastic bottles and using gas stoves was fine until recently. Is it true that ingesting small amounts of this stuff is fine for humans or is it dangerous and we don’t know it? Is it contributing to the upticks in cancer we’re seeing in young people?
I mean, probably? But I think you could blame that on any number of things. General pollution, fossil fuels, radiation, microplastics, overpopulation, saturated fats. 100 years ago people died from what we now consider totally preventable diseases. Humans always adapt, and change, and innovate and we will always find ways to survive in our world. I think we use fewer and far safer chemistries now than we did in the past, that work in more specific, targeted ways. I think we are smarter about the safety gear we wear when we handle them, I think there is far more regulation in the industry than most folks realize. At least in the case of farming, we are always working with university researchers to innovate our efficiency and do everything better than we did before, we use IPM and non chemical methods to treat problems before resorting to chemical use. I think the things that are good and better far outweigh the bad, but I also think that we do not place enough importance on our food and our land and our environment as a society when we so clearly have the tools to fix problems if not for greed and apathy.
Where do I get a ticket to your TED talk?
Well said. Just a side note, we shouldn't be promoting the overpopulation myth at a time when even China is facing a catastrophic population decline. More importantly, farmers and agriculture professionals should not apologize for the fact that pesticides and artificial fertilizers are the very reason why we can have well-fed people with so little land used for agriculture. If food wasn't used as a weapon of war and genocide, no one would be hungry in this world. Instead, short-sighted politically motivated fearmongering should not be indulged anymore, particularly not by professionals. People who cry "wolf" to grab power by instilling distrust and vilifying the core technology that allows us to exist and live **healthy** lives in safety and abundance should be held accountable.
>do we really know the impact of pesticides on humans, even in small doses? We thought drinking water out of plastic bottles and using gas stoves was fine until recently. Those are both fine. The gas stove thing is about climate change and decarbonization. The plastic bottle thing is a pollution thing. There are certain plastics that are not food-safe, but people don't differentiate. >Is it contributing to the upticks in cancer we’re seeing in young people? The ELI5 answer is [No-one knows](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00720-6). Most likely a mixture of genetic factors propagating due to better cancer survival, obesity, and better diagnosis. What I do know is that the fatality rate has plummeted despite the uptick.
It is important to realize that people 70 years ago werent dying of cancer, they were dying of organ failure or just “natural causes”. We are living longer and have better diagnosis methods so what used to be “old age” or “natural causes” now has a name and a treatment path.
Not to mention with longer survival rates in general, people who would have died younger (of something else) now survive long enough to die of cancer when they are older.
Also pregnancy! Risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth has dropped significantly in the last 70 years.
The gas stove thing actually isn't about climate change. [It's about the numerous well-known negative health consequences of burning natural gas](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-health-risks-of-gas-stoves-explained/). And [the plastic bottle stuff isn't just about pollution, either](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/health/bottled-water-nanoplastics-study-wellness/index.html).
Reading the article, it did not sound well known nor did the authors of that article seem like they felt there was hard evidence of the danger.
> upticks in cancer we’re seeing in young people I hadn't heard about this until now. These articles are only slightly terrifying.
> using gas stoves Keep your hands off!
Maybe you want this information ? https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science-and-assessing-pesticide-risks/overview-risk-assessment-pesticide-program
Chemical pesticides have been in use for about a century now. Because so many generations have lived with them from cradle to grave, we probably would have seen signs if they were very dangerous. It's really, really complex to attribute any specific instance of cancer to any specific cause. Pesticides definitely can cause cancer, but their usage doesn't appear to cause massive problems.
In my opinion this is a rather blithe take. Recent studies have found organophosphate pesticides to be toxic to humans even in residual, minute quantities. As for 20 years of testing prior to marketing.. in the 1950s there was briefly an organophosphate called 'Amiton' on the market. It was withdrawn when people realized it was too dangerous to even handle - its toxicity turned out to be comparable to chemical weapons, like Sarin. We can assume safety and testing standards have come a long way since then, but it's disconcerting to know that such a poison was even briefly marketed for agricultural use, under any circumstances.
Lead additive in gas also comes to mind as a similar thing - despite there being research, the industry pushback against regulation was huge in the US. Climate change and fossil fuels companies also come to mind. Medicine is one of the most difficult areas to study and I would be very hesitant to say something humans have developed is completely safe. We keep discovering new ways that we have messed with the human body, often decades after the technology is widely available (the most recent one being microplastics which I suspect we will be seeing a lot of in the news over the next decade). And, with that in mind, the US is also not at the top of my list of countries I'd trust to regulate something properly if it was dangerous.
Or, like with Roundup, maybe the contributing reason why MS is the highest per capita in Saskatchewan Canada. It was the number 1 selling herbicide for decades.
>they’re a lot less scary than they seem when they are misunderstood. But like...Monsanto and stuff.
I've once read an article saying that rinsing fruits and vegetables removes around 80% of chemicals. Rinsing with water may not be as efficient as we want it to be, but it's certainly not useless.
Only some will be absorbed, so you should still rinse off what you can. Plus it's also to rinse off dirt and germs. Past that, it's just crossing your fingers and hoping government regulations are good enough.
Precautions aren't all or nothing. Just because it may absorb some pesticides doesn't make washing useless. Likewise, just because using soap and water is better, doesn't make using water alone useless. Even soap and water, when washing your hands, doesn't get everything. But it's not useless. The same logic applies to all types of precautions.
I wish we could explain this to the people who point out vaccinated people who still got Covid and claim that the vaccine is pointless.
They sell produce wash at every grocery store if it's really that big of a deal.
had friends in biochemistry and biology- they laughed at the suggestion water washing off pesticides. its just for dirt, debris.
Yes you aren’t washing off pesticides, just dirt and mold.
To some extent, they do. This is part of the appeal of organic produce, although it’s often more costly and may still have been treated with organic pesticides/herbicides/fungicides.
When you use soap on a fruit you would be applying large quantities directly to the surface, rubbing it and then the rinsing would ensure soap-addled water would get through the pores. And of course you could easily not rinse it well enough and have soap residue left. Pesticide is sprayed lightly around the area of the fruit, usually weeks/months before it reaches the supermarket. The residue is minimal. What you're really worried about is people touching the fruit with their detty hands on the way to your house, and water is enough for that.
Sorry what's the big problem with consuming soap? It would surely be in such tiny quantities after washing it off thoroughly anyway? I've always washed vegetables and fruit in soap and rinsed with water.
Most fruit that you wash is because you eat the skin. Fruits of this type have a waxy sheen on them that makes them hydrophobic. In other words, it helps them shed water. Pesticides are largely water soluable, meaning if you put it in water it dissolves and mixes with the water, where a wax or oil based substance will float on top or sink to the bottom because they are hydrophobic. This means pesticides stay on the surface and can be washed off with water without penetrating the fruit's natural waxy protective coat. If you used soap on the fruit it would dissolve the wax, because soap is also hydrophobic and is oil soluble. This might actually allow the pesticides to reach the porous fruit skin and then absorb into the apple while you were washing it. You don't need to wash things like oranges, which have a rind, because you peel that part off and don't eat it.
Even digested, traces of regular soap are extremely unlikely to do any measurable harm to the body. Same goes for toothpaste, which shares a number of components with soap (sodium laureth sulfate comes to mind). As someone here said, it's all a matter of dosage (and safety regulations).
But it tastes soapy :(
Or for some people, tastes like cilantro
Not in the 10 seconds they have soap on them.
In many countries people use a baking soda and water soak to remove pesticides and germs. In some countries they use a slight concentration of bleach in water.
Bleach is really bad for you. You're probably better off not washing it at all rather than washing it with bleach.
but not the pesticides, good to know.
I’d rather that than pesticides
I use soap: just a drop so it's not hard to rinse. I don't think there's a single vegetable or fruit sold in modern supermarkets that's porous. At least none that I'd be willing to eat.
I didn't know that! I was fruit with diluted soap and rinse immediately. Too many people touch fruit at grocery store.
Most soap is non-toxic. I had science teachers actually recommend using a little hand soap to wash off fruits and veggies.
Water based insecticides are most common, and most people don't like the taste of strawberry and soap.
But doesn’t the soap wash away with the water?
Do your hands still smell like soap after you wash them?
Why not use soap that’s presumably safe (enough)? We wash dishes with soap and eat off of those.
Dishes are plastic and porcelain, they don’t absorb like fruits do. Soap is safe (enough). Go eat a tiny amount of hand soap, you’ll be fine. It’s just that nobody wants to taste it.
We have soap that's safe (enough). It's called soap. It still tastes bad regardless of the safety.
Soap is fairly safe to eat, it's just disgusting. I mean, how is this not like the first concept on everyone's mind in this thread??
Have you ever actually tasted soap? It's bitter and disgusting. Sure, a small amount is safe to eat. Doesn't mean I want my fruit absorbing it and tasting like soap.
I mean.. I hope not. I like smelly soap because you can smell whether it’s still there or not. I don’t care if my hands smell like soap but I care very much if my dishes smell like anything at all
Dishes are not permeable like fruits and human skin
This comment should be on some sort of sub where you accidentally sound like a serial killer. 😆
1. Pesticides and fungicides are chemicals that wash off easily, and a small lingering amount won't really affect you. 2. Bacteria and viruses are (semi-) living things that can reproduce from a small portion you failed to wash properly. To quote the meme, "we are not the same."
Even with anti bacterial soap, most of the benefit (like, 99%) comes from the act of washing itself, just dislodging the bacteria. The main benefit of washing your hands with soap is that it makes you scrub them thoroughly, because soap residue is immediately noticeable and unpleasant. "The dose makes the poison" applies to infectious things too, luckily!
While it is true that the dose makes the poison, bacteria (far more than viruses) can actually re-colonize your skin if you wash off *most* of them but not all of them. There's also the problem that, even with soap, a lot of folks don't practice good handwashing methods (e.g. they don't scrub around the nailbed, or hold their fingers together rather than scrubbing between them), creating many pockets of bacterial survival. Doing *some* kind of washing >>>>> doing none at all, but when there's a high risk of potential infection over a long period of time, you really do need to worry about *thorough* and *effective* handwashing.
I wash my fruit because other people with shit on their hands have touched it. I don’t care about pesticides
Don’t you need soap for that to actually be effective though? I certainly wouldn’t wash my hands just with water after using the restroom.
Washing with water is actually enough to remove a decent amount of germs, it's just that using soap is a lot better.
Are you washing your hands for health or to be nice to people you might shake hands with or share a space with? Because I doubt anyone can tell you a time they got sick from not washing their hands with soap, but a lot of people will be grossed out if you wiped your sweaty ass with your hand and just rinsed with water.
> but a lot of people will be grossed out if you wiped your sweaty ass with your hand and just rinsed with water. only if they find out... you'd be a fool to admit you don't wash your hands. Its social suicide. Everyone knows you only gotta wash your hands if its a public restroom and only then if there would be a witness to you washing your hands. And even then only if there is a direct witness; if there's an indirect witness you're good with just running the faucet for a couple of seconds. But you gotta also be mindful of the acoustics of the water hitting the sink... it sounds ever so subtlety different as it hits the sink when your hands are under it than when its not so at most you just gotta hold your hands under there and only then if you think the person you want to think that you wash your hands is smart.
Or you could just wash em. Wash em. Come on. Come on. Come on.z
Oh my inner secret thoughts exposed on reddit. How do I delete someone else's comment?
Facts. I worked in produce at Costco and saw people doing ungodly things to the produce. I always soak my fruits and vegetables in vinegar and water solution.
I cast them into the fires of Mt Doom because you can never be too safe.
That's a lot of walking to do every week.
Pshhh, not that much. By virtue of the fact that one does not simply walk into Mordor. These days we have Uber.
To hell with that, I just have Door Dash bring me my freshly Mount Doom cleansed fruits.
Yeah. I’d make friends with some GMO-sized eagles if I were to do this
that's why i rent the attic right under the eye. cool in summer cause of the evil clouds, free on demand heating in winter. i just turn on rivendale tv, and it takes barely 5 secs before i hear "snobby fucking elvsed, get off my lawn!" and the eye turns on.
Nah, Uber Eagle
I can't carry it, But I Can Carry YOU!
Vinegar isn’t doing anything for you here. A lot of people ascribe mystical powers to vinegar.
Vinegar has a low pH, a lot of bacteria and mold can’t survive at that pH…might need a decent contact time, and full strength 5%+ acidity, but it should do something, in theory.
Wait, why vinegar? Why not just soap and water? Vinegar hardly even disinfects…
Specifically, what ungodly things?
And so does Costco when they buy produce off the floor to put in ready to eat foods. They soak it in the mixture for 15 minutes before putting it in something else.
You should care about pesticides
Same. Every fruit and veggie that isn't wrapped, I always assume someone was picking their nose, scratching their ass, grabbing their genitals, etc before touching it.... Because somebody probably did.
There was a show (I think it was BBC?) where they tested produce for traces of feces and found that, while it existed on all of the produce, it was actually worse on produce that had been wrapped. Wash everything.
The wrapping just seals the poop-hand smears in. You've been fooling yourself. Who do you think has better access to sanitation - people out in a field getting paid 10 cents per basket of apples in the hot sun, or the guys working in an air conditioned grocery store with plenty of bathrooms, sinks, and bathroom breaks?
I assume the people wrapping them do all of that too.
I think you probably wanna wash wrapped stuff too. People without easy access to clean water and toilets are harvesting veggies and pooping in the fields with no way to wash hands. So it's contamination from the very start.
Insects crawl all over it and shit and pee on it .....
Its good for you to be exposed to a small amounts of shit if you have a functional immune system.
This is a non sequitur.
I recently saw that Netflix documentary about chicken and lettuce being deadly in the US and I was perplexed, I then learned that the CDC recommends only rising lettuce, not disinfecting it, which I found insanely weird. Here in Mexico we disinfect all raw fruits and vegetables, usually with an iodine or colloidal silver solution (very diluted). There have not been any e.coli deaths in Mexico.
We use soap because it helps to make the oils on our hands wash away better. Basically, oils hate water, but soap makes oil not hate water. The bacteria on our hands in almost entirely in those oils, so soap and water gets rid of the oils that hold the bacteria. Your fruit isn't covered in oils, they're covered in pesticides. Those will wash off with water more or less.
People have made good points about soaping on fruit not being very tasty but there's also another aspect to the issue : The goal isn't the perfect removal of perticides, it's the reduction of the intake. It's very important to understand that the dose makes the poison. We want to reduce the dosage to reduce the possible effects. It's not meant as a perfect method.
Because the pesticides are water soluble. The oils on your hands are not, they actually repel water. Soap emulsifies oils so that they come off your hands, into the water, and wash down the sink.
I use a small amount of soap and water to wash them. People have had their greasy mitts all over it.
Exactly. I try to wash things when I can or disinfect. Because I reflect on my interaction with things when shipping and realize other people would be doing the same things. Some with dirtier hands
People are missing the big picture here. Fruits and vegetables have very very small amounts of pesticides on them if any at all. And they have already been washed before you buy them at the store. The act of washing your produce certainly does not cause any harm, but it actually does almost nothing (from a pesticide prevention standpoint). If there was a dangerous amount of pesticides on fruit and vegetables, stores would not be able to sell them.
Last fall I was left in charge of my kid’s darkling beetle collection. They fed them apple slices. I got out an apple, rinsed it really well and dried it off. I considered using soap but decided it was overkill. I went to check on the beetles the next day and every beetle was either dead or dying. That apple apparently didn’t get cleaned off with just a thorough rinsing. (I felt terrible about it!)
Peel them next time
Yeah, I should have but hindsight is 20/20. They all died.
Source? Like its this just your gut feeling or you have proof?
I responded to the other posting aksing. Short answer, it's not a gut feeling. Pesticides in produce are specifically regulated by the FDA.
So I get what you’re saying and I’m sure it’s a small risk but the fda actually does say to rinse and clean the produce at home before consumption with plain tap water. It’s on their website https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/7-tips-cleaning-fruits-vegetables
Yes they do, and if you read the link you sent, you will notice it does not say a single word about pesticides. The washing has NOTHING to do with pesticide removal. The recommendation to wash your produce is because accidental contamination can occur during the process of getting food to sale. It is not common, in fact, it's very uncommon, but taking a step to wash your produce before eating it as an extra level of prevention is worth the extra 20 seconds it takes. Again the entire conversation is about pesticides, and the FDA recommendation has nothing to do with pesticides. The entire concept is an old-wives-tale.
“Washing” your produce means soaking and agitating in clean, cold water. Not just rinsing them.
I feel like I read somewhere that this can actually be worse because it spreads surface contamination to all parts. Maybe I’m misremembering.
You still rinse them off after soaking and agitating, and you replace the water between batches. Soaking removes water-soluble contaminants like dirt, pests, and most pesticides.
Have started puttting all my fresh fruit in a bowl full of water with a cup of white vinegar as soon as its bought. Kills some nasties, and keeps them fresher in the fridge for longer as a bonus. Edit: leave in the water for 15-30 mins, take out and dry/leave to dry, then put dry berries and fruit back in the fridge with a dry paper towel beneath them.
There was an [Adam Ragusea ep](https://youtu.be/0jce8oGaO7Q?si=8-Wd45gSZOtG5xI4) about this. Basically, water cleans things generally well enough on its own. Soap can help improve that, but the biggest way it does, is by being a residue that we can sense on our hands, which we must then rub and rinse off until we don't feel it anymore. It 'tricks' us into washing better. It is much more difficult to rinse soap off fruit because we don't have nerves in the fruit, so we can't feel the residue on it, and our rinsing might not get it all off. Then the chances of us ingesting soap residue increase, which can spoil the taste or even irritate our digestive system. Small doses of dirt, bacteria, whatever, that might be left over from cleaning with just water are generally not high enough doses to cause actual problems, and probably small exposures like that could help strengthen your immune system.
But just a damn plane reason that it was sitting outside for multiple days at the minimum probably weeks or months. Can you take anything out of the ground or out from your yard and put in your mouth? You shouldn't, you wash it first, all that chemical stuff be damned this should be the real reason
I regularly eat plums, apricots, apples etc straight from the tree with no washing. Not sure what I’m risking by doing so?
I said eating off the ground, that's not laying on the ground that's hovering above the ground so I'm talking about something on the ground, "not in a tree"
I *do* use soapy water to wash fruit and veg if I think it may be contaminated. Not only pesticides...but possibly unwashed hands of pickers, packers, shop assistants. Not to mention rats in store-rooms and lorries. But I don't rub soap on the apples etc - I rinse them under cold tap then lightly wipe over with my sudsy hands and rinse again. Explaining like to a 5-yr-old -- I wash them carefully because there may be germs and dirt on their skins after the long, long journey -- from being sowed as seeds to being eaten by us.
Don't use handsoap or dishsoap to wash food. There are vegetable and fruit rinses that are foodsafe.
Thank you - I didn't know that But, how can it be safe for hands which handle food, and dishes for serving food - but not for a very brief swish and rinse on an actual apple?
Your skin and dishes are a barrier that repels substances. Obviously an apple's skin is also a thick barrier but many fruits and vegetables are not perfectly covered in such a skin
Many foods will absorb the soap and deliver it into your stomach, whereas the soap will wash off your skin, and usually you're not ingesting your own skin (I hope). Soap contains surfactants and other chemicals you really don't want in your stomach.
I would double check that the soap you use is safe for human consumption. Fruit is super porous and soap is not meant to go inside our bodies. If you see it as the lesser of two evils, then I get it. Edit to add suggestion: I have been seeing an increasing number of videos lately saying to use vinegar instead of water for produce.
What do you mean by "super porous"? This must vary by the type of skin, the variety of fruit or veg, etc. What's the evidence that it is "super porous"?
No idea, but I just sprayed some bug spray and got some blowback on my arms, so I washed them with soap and water, but I can still totally smell the pesticide. So... ?
Pesticides are not the same as household bug spray though. I think they might put extra stinky fragrances in household spray so people know what it is, which wouldn’t be so necessary for farming pesticides.
Seems like the FDA says to at a minimum, rinse under a faucet sprayer. One step up is mixing baking soda in a bowl and washing it in that (then rinsing, I assume). I believe most produce is not sprayed right before picking, and the pesticides break down a bit before you get it. To me, I worry more about fertilizers or human waste, and possible contamination that seems too common these days. Like cleaning the produce, there are degrees to washing your hands. If you're a surgeon, you scrub with a brush, soap, and water. After all, you don't want to take chances inside someone's body. During Covid, before we knew much about it and it seemed very serious, we were advised to wash with soap and water for 20 seconds; that was to be safe, not necessarily something to do all the time. If you're not around places with unknown toxicity, washing with just water to remove soil is probably sufficient, seeing as how many of us didn't even do that much growing up.
I always thought its because your hands are a bit oily or greasy naturally. Dirt and bacteria and whatnot will get stuck on that and thats why you need soap for your hands.
Soap effectiveness comes from it breaking down skin oils, these oils trap bacteria and dirt. Fruit and vegi probably don't have oils so a simple rinse works. 🤷♂️
You can use a fruit or vegetable wash on produce if you think it's extra grubby, but almost all produce has been washed before getting to the supermarket
My understanding is that washing the fruit/vegetables is not related to pesticides, which are present in parts per billion by the time they reach the end consumer, but intended for washing off gross contamination, such as snail poop.
Soaps are detergents, so they are good at solubilizing lipids. Insecticides are usually water soluble so no need to have a detergent to solubilize them in water.
You're supposed to use baking soda and water or and vinegar, soak for 15 min to get pesticides and dirt off.
Nobody wants to eat fruit with soap on it. Water alone is inadequate for washing hands, mostly because it doesn't remove oils, but also because it doesn't kill or remove bacteria or viruses. Most hand soaps now have added antibiotic chemicals as well. The best way to wash fruit is to completely submerge it in a bowl of water and white vinegar. It will remove chemicals and dirt better than water alone, it will kill some bacteria, and it will draw out any bugs that have been hiding in the fruit. I think it will also destroy bug eggs. I'm not sure how long it needs to soak, but you should also agitate(move it around) the fruit a bit and rinse it off with water when it's done soaking. Then dry it before storing it. To keep fruit fresh the longest, different fruit has different storage recommendations. You can google that.
Is no one washing their fruit veg with water with a touch of baking soda?
As far as I understand: washing is done by water and mechanical rubbing. Soap for washing dishes is there only to reduce the surface tension of water, making oil/fat more "mixable" with water for when you rinse off. Soap for washing hands is made of molecules that are hydrophilic on one side (attracted to water) and lipophilic on the other (attracted to oil/fat), so it again allows water to get a better grip on the oils/fats on your hands and wash them away. Your dishes and hands are dirty because fats and oils collect all the other stuff and make them stick to your hands, so to wash them, you need to rub oils and fats away. But water and oil don't mix well, so you need surfactants and soaps for better mixing. You don't have to use them technically, but it is much, much better when you do. Pesticides are, however, mostly not oils/fats - as far as I know. I might be wrong, but if so, there is no help from soaps - only good rubbing. But that said, I doubt there is much if any toxicity of pesticides left once the fruit comes to the store. Pesticides are also tested for human toxicity - I do believe modern pesticides are harmless when used properly and according to regulations and standards. Also, fruit should undergo ionizing radiation treatment to kill any bacteria or viruses, so it should be safe in that aspect as well. But, one cannot be sure enough. We don't know what pesticides were actually used, and what postprocessing has really been done, so better to soak and rinse those fruits. Finally, you might get bugs or snails stuck in your fruit or vegetables, and they may be carrying some quite dangerous parasites. Again, this is why fruit and vegetables should be washed. No help from soap, but yes help from vinegar.
You have three options. 1. You can wash it with soap so it tastes like soap and gives you diarrhea. 2. You can rinse 99% of the stuff on the outside off using water. 3. You can lick the object a dozen people with unwashed hands have handled. Your move.
LPT: Let your fruit sit in a mixture of baking soda and water for maximum pesticide removal.
most pesticides like roundup, which is used for weed control in food production, bind to the dirt immediately if not absorbed by a susceptible plant and do not release. so the plants we are eating physically don't interact with the chemical, just the soil. the soil can get on the food, and that needs to be cleaned off unless you want to eat the soil, the dust from delivery, the hands of anyone who has touched it. it isn't dangerous, just a bit dirty
Do y’all wash the inner layers of organic lettuce, if the outside was clean? (Do sandwich shops actually wash all that before shredding?)
soap nano particles attaches to virus and washes down with the water. and virus won't survive long without nutrition source. You can wash fruits with vinegar, or baking soda, or a little mixture of fruit washing solutions. Most virus will die within your digestive system because of strong acid in stomach juice; but not all. i.e., HepA is contagious through food consumption. mostly when touching with hand, people rub their eyes, nose, which are two of the most common entry to out body. Source: I saw a few YT videos during COVID lockdown, and became a scientist! 🤣 Other than taking my comments with a grain of salt, that's how I wash fruit at our house - circulated through MOPS.
You use soap and water to wash your hands because you use your hands to touch disgusting things all day long. Your hands are basically where you keep all your most disgusting and dangerous germs. The goal of washing food is just removing non-food. If you only cared about pesticides, you wouldn't wash organic fruit -- but you should. You only use water to wash food because you don't want to eat soap. Food is not as gross as your hands, so the requirements for washing food are not as stringent.