Monday, December 10, 2012

Why It's Important to Wash Your Food

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this topic for quite some time, but I always get tied up with something else. I think I'm a pretty educated consumer when it comes to understanding our food chain - I only buy organic and I choose local when it's available. Now, some people will argue that it's better for the environment to buy local over organic and others will argue the exact opposite, so I say you need to decide what's right for you.

Now, if you want to know about the entire food industry, you should watch films like Food, Inc. or King Corn. What I'm talking about is more basic, and from a plant-based perspective. I want to follow where our food comes from so you can see why it's important to wash your food, because I know many of you out there don't. (And I guess it's one of my pet peeves.)

So let's think about where our food comes from. First, someone grows the crops and tends to them. Second, someone picks the crops. Third, someone preps (depending on where and what maybe washed, maybe not) the food and packages it. Fourth, the food is transported to a warehouse/clearinghouse or if you're lucky goes directly to the seller. Fifth, the food makes it to the store. Sixth, the store stocks the produce for the consumer to select. And not to mention all of the other customers picking up the food, inspecting it, and then putting it back.

Now think about all of the humans that have touched your food during this process. Think about all the room for human error and how each place has different processes and procedures. To most of these people, it's just a job. They aren't going to take extra great care with the food, not like they would if it was going directly to their families. And even if stores have policies, it doesn't mean that each employee is going to follow that policy.

Let me give you an example. At one store that I go to, if some of the produce falls on the floor, they throw it away. Yet at another store, I watched as some of the kale dropped to the floor, sat there for a while, and then an employee came over, picked it back up, and just put it back on the shelf! He didn't bother to wash it off or anything. And yet previously, at that same second store, I had watched a different employee throw away a bunch of perfectly good beets. I had asked him why he was throwing them away and he said the tops were broken off and no one would buy them because they didn't look nice. (And here I'm thinking, give them to a food pantry then!)

Each person has their own idea about food and cleanliness. We don't want to be wasteful, but we don't want to be careless either. If lettuce or some other type of produce falls on the floor, you don't have to throw it away, but for goodness sake, wash it off first before putting it back on the shelf.

Even if you just washed your produce with water, it's better than nothing. Some people choose to use a fruit and veggie wash. Others choose to use the food-grade hydrogen peroxide. Here's a little homemade formula I found out about during my juice fast - Wash your produce in water with some lemon juice and salt (1/2 a lemon and a tsp of sea salt from http://drbenkim.com/articles-pesticides.html). It forms a mildly acidic solution that removes pesticides, residues, grime, etc. Just soak for 5 minutes, rinse, and dry thoroughly before storing.

And if you're still not convinced that you should wash or inspect your food before you eat it, here's something I found on my kale after getting it home and AFTER washing it:





Just trying to promote a little conscious eating...

Wishing you peas and good health,

VeggiePatti
www.veggiepatti.com






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