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Jason Bolton: Hello, my name is Jason Bolton. I'm the statewide food safety educator for
the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
It's been known for a very long time that a diet with several servings of fruits and
vegetables can have many health benefits. But with headlines in the news like "31 people
die after eating E. coli-contaminated sprouts," or, "17 hospitalized after eating salmonella
papaya," it doesn't exactly instill confidence.
So whether you're shopping in your Maine farmers' markets, grocery stores or big-box stores,
if you follow these easy steps of washing your produce, you can reduce your risk of
food-borne illness.
One way to increase the safety of your produce is by washing your produce. According to the
FDA, washing produce prior to peeling, cutting or chopping anything in the processing of
your produce, will actually reduce the amount of bacteria that could be present on it. Therefore,
decreasing your risk of food-borne illness.
In today's video, we're going to talk about proper ways to wash fruits and vegetables.
So let's start with the basics.
First, you want to make sure you wash your hands with warm, soapy water. In addition,
you want to make sure that you wash all utensils, equipment and any contact surfaces with hot,
soapy water. You want to make sure you use clean, cold water to wash your produce. Make
sure that water is drinkable.
When you're actually purchasing your products, you want to make sure that they have intact
skins that are not bruised. And you never want to use detergents to wash your fruits
and vegetables. They can leave residues on the fruits and vegetables, which can be unsafe
to consume.
If you see a package of produce that's labeled as pre-washed, triple-washed or ready-to-eat,
make sure that you do not rewash those. You can actually further contaminate those clean
products.
So for your fruits and vegetables that have a thick surface or a tough surface, like potatoes,
apples and carrots, you want to make sure that you scrub the outside of that, removing
any dirt.
For your fruits and vegetables that have high surface area or complex fruits and vegetables,
like broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, things of that nature, you want to make sure
you soak those fruits and vegetables for one to two minutes in cold water.
Your last groups of fruits and vegetables that you want to look at are your delicate
or fragile fruits and vegetables. These are the ones you want to wash with cold, running
water in a colander -- things like cherries, strawberries, blueberries.
Also, when you're done washing your fruits and vegetables, you have the option to dry
with a clean paper towel. This actually will remove more bacteria, in addition to the washing
process.
A study done at the University Department of Maine Food Science and Human Nutrition
looked at chemical washes and rinses, like Fit, that you find at the supermarket. They
compared Fit, versus drinking clean, cold water. It turned out that the clean drinking
cold water and the Fit produced the same amount of bacteria that was present on the surface
of most fruits and vegetables.
This study was done with blueberries. In addition, they found that they reduced the same amount
of pesticide residues found on the surface of fruits and vegetables.
When you're done processing your fruits and vegetables -- this means peeling, washing,
cutting or any other processing that might take place -- you want to make sure that there's
no temperature abuse that takes place. This means that after you're done processing, you
want to refrigerate or bring the temperature of your produce down to 40 degrees or below.
In addition, you want to make sure that you only purchase, cut or peel items -- this is
your produce we're talking about -- that is at refrigeration temperature in the grocery
stores.
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