There are many tips and tricks you need to know to prepare clean, healthy food. Whether you purchase conventional or organic foods, it’s essential that all the fresh foods that make their way into your home be rinsed and washed before taking a bite.
Why Wash?
Conventional produce is grown using harmful pesticides and herbicides that are known to cause cancer, reproductive toxicity, as well as damage to the immune and nervous systems (1).
Although produce is washed and sorted before making its way into the grocery store, traces of these chemicals can still be found on the skins of the fruits and vegetables you have at home.
While most people rinse their fruits and vegetables before eating them raw, not everybody cleans fresh food before cooking it, 25% of pesticides are not water-soluble, so you’ll need to pull out the big guns to clear them away (2).
Organic produce isn’t grown using these chemicals, but natural fertilizers such like manure, bone meal, and compost alongside beneficial insects to help them grow.
Sometimes, traces of bugs, insect eggs, fungi, bacteria, and dirt still linger on your food after processing. Luckily, it’s quite easy to get rid of this residue.
Easy Veggie Wash
Baking soda, also known as bicarbonate of soda, is a natural cleaning solution that gets rid of pesticides, bacteria, fungi and viruses. The substance is naturally produced in your body to buffer acidity, so it’s not harmful to ingest and it won’t alter the taste of your food.
Non-organic Produce
To clear away chemical residue, prepare a mixture using 1/4 cup of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of raw organic apple cider vinegar and 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice.
Combine the mixture in a spray bottle and spray generously onto the produce. Let it sit for 5 minutes, scrub with a produce brush, and rinse under clean cold water.
Thick-Skin Vegetables
It’s important to also wash fruits with a thick skin, like cantaloupe, since bacteria on the skin can be transferred into the flesh of the fruit as you slice through it. This combination also gets rid of wax from fruits like apples and tomatoes.
- Combine a few tablespoons of baking soda into a cup or two of water.
- Pour it into a spray bottle, spray and let it sit for 3-5 minutes
- Use the scrub brush to clean the vegetables and rinse under cold water.
Leafy vegetables
Leafy vegetables can be hard to clean because of all the nooks and crannies they contain, that’s why it’s best to soak rather than spray them.
To make the mixture, combined 1/4 cup of ACV with 2 tablespoons of salt and soak for 25-30 minutes. Scrub the leaves using your hands and rinse thoroughly.