How to wash fruits and vegetables to eat them safely?

| When we talk about the need to wash a vegetable food before consuming it, it is not for a single reason, because in the vegetables that we collect we can find different types of products or substances and even small living beings that we do not want to eat.

Nobody wants to consume a food with parasites or microorganisms that can. In fact, that's part of what pesticides do. Similarly, insects, dirt debris and even some small stones are found on vegetables when they are picked. However, the food industry does much of the work of eliminating these small organisms or undesirable residues.

Tips for washing fruits and vegetables well

It is preferable that before consuming the vegetable products we wash them to further reduce any type of residue, not only pesticides, but also particles of soil or stones, small insects, etc. The Spanish Agency for Consumption, Food Safety and Nutrition () gives us the following advice:

• Wash the vegetables under the stream of the water tap, even if we are going to peel them, as this way we prevent contamination from passing from the knife to the food.
• After washing it is important to drain the vegetables well and dry them with paper of kitchen. If we are not going to consume or cook them then we owe them keep in the fridge.
• In case of acquiring hard-shelled vegetables, specific brushes can be used for the surfaces of these foods (they would be fruits such as melon, watermelon ... and vegetables such as cucumber, zucchini ...)
• In certain cases it is advisable to use a disinfectant solution, for example, if we are going to eat raw fruit with skin or raw vegetables (lettuce, spinach ...).

In these cases, after washing under running water, it is advisable to submerge them for a five minutes in drinking water with 1 teaspoon of a sodium hypochlorite solution. The concentration indicated in the product instructions must be applied, but immersion must not exceed five minutes. Then it is necessary to rinse with plenty of running water. Sodium hypochlorite must be labeled "suitable for drinking water disinfection."

• We must bear in mind that fruits and vegetables are cut after cleaning to prevent the fluids from increasing the amount of organic matter in the water.
• We must always perform a good rinse and then, if they are not consumed immediately, we will have to.

• When we wash a vegetable we are significantly reducing the possibility of ingesting undesirable microorganisms with food, as well as the amount of pesticides that will remain in the food we consume.
• The recommendation to wash vegetables is to do it under running tap water, it is preferable to immerse them in water.
• In some cases it is also recommended disinfect leaving them to soak for a maximum of five minutes with water and a suitable product for this purpose.

Bachelor of Food Science and Technology Diploma in Human Nutrition and Dietetics