"How to Make Your Own Fruit and Vegetable Wash"
How might we reduce our exposure
to pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables?
What about staying away from imported produce?
It turns out domestic produce may be even worse,
dispelling this notion that imported fruits and vegetables
pose greater potential health threats to consumers.
Buying organic dramatically reduces dietary exposure to pesticides,
but does not eliminate the potential risk.
Pesticide residues are detectable in about 1 in 10 organic crop samples
due to cross-contamination from neighboring fields,
to continued presence of very persistent pesticides like DDT
in the soil, or accidental or fraudulent use.
By choosing organic, one hopes to shift exposures
from a range of uncertain risk
to more of a range of negligible risk.
But even if all we had to eat were the most
pesticide-laden of conventional produce,
there is a clear scientific consensus in the scientific community
that the health benefits from consuming fruits and vegetables
outweigh any potential risk from pesticide residues.
But we can easily reduce whatever risk there is
by rinsing our fruits and vegetables under running water.
There are, however, a plethora of products
alleged by advertisers to reduce fruit and produce pesticide residues
more effectively than water, and touted to concerned consumers.
For example, Proctor & Gamble
introduced a Fruit and Vegetable Wash in the year 2000.
As part of the introduction TGI Fridays jumped on board,
bragging on their menus that the cheese and bacon puddles
they call potato skins were first washed with the new product.
After all, it was proclaimed proven to be 98% more effective
than water in removing pesticides.
So researchers put it to the test.
And it did no better than plain tap water.
Shortly thereafter Proctor & Gamble discontinued the product,
but numerous others took its place claiming
their vegetable washes are three, four, five
or even ten times more effective than water.
To which the researcher replied, "That's mathematically impossible."
If water removes like 50%,
you can't take off 10 times more than 50%.
They actually found water removes
up to 80% of pesticide residues, like the fungicide, Captan, for example.
So for other brands of veggie washes to brag
three, four, five, ten times better than water
is mathematically impossible indeed.
Other fruit and vegetable washes have since been put to the test.
They compared Fruit and Vegetable Wash to Fit,
to two I've never heard of: Organic Clean and Veggie Clean,
compared to using dish washing soap --
all compared to just rinsing with plain tap water.
196 samples of lettuce, strawberries, and tomatoes were tested.
And they found little or no difference
between just rinsing with tap water
compared to any of the veggie washes or the dish soap.
They all just seemed like a waste of money.
The researchers concluded that
just the mechanical action of, you know, rubbing the produce
under tap water seemed to do it,
and that using detergents or fruit and vegetable washes
do not enhance the removal of pesticide residues
from produce above that of just rinsing with tap water alone.
That may not be saying much though. Captan appears to be the exception.
When rinsing with plain water was tried against half a dozen other pesticides,
less than half of the residues were removed.
Now fingernail polish remover works better,
but the goal is to end up with a less toxic, not more toxic tomato.
We need a straight forward, plausible, safe method
for enhanced pesticide removal,
although the efficacy of pesticide removal from fruits and vegetables
has been rarely reported in the medical literature.
Anything we can add to the tap water to boost its pesticide-stripping abilities?
Well, if you soak potatoes in water,
between about 2 to 13% of the pesticides are removed.
But a 5% acetic acid solution removes up to 100%.
What's that? Plain white vinegar.
But 5% is full strength. What about diluted vinegar?
Diluted vinegar only seemed marginally better
than tap water for removing pesticide residues.
Using full-strength vinegar would get expensive though.
Thankfully there's something cheaper that works even better.
Salt water!
A 10% salt water solution appears to work
as good or better than full-strength vinegar.
To make a 10% salt solution,
you just have to mix up one part salt to nine parts water.
Though make sure to rinse all the salt off before eating it.
There's not much you can do for the pesticides in animal products though.
The top sources of some pesticides are fruits and vegetables,
but for other it's dairy, eggs, and meat because the chemicals build up in the fat.
So what to do about the pesticides in meat or egg yokes, egg whites?
Hard-boiling appears to destroy
more pesticides than scrambling.
But for the pesticides that build up in the fat in fish or chicken,
cooking can sometimes increase pesticide levels
that you can't just wash off.
In fact, washing meat, poultry, or eggs is considered
one of the top ten dangerous food safety mistakes.