Recently, while doing some research for one of my clients, I ran across a magazine article that took me by surprise. The writer of one article stated that while inorganic produce should always be washed before consuming or cooking, organic produce didn't need washing.
Wrong! All produce should be washed. Here's why:
1. Organic produce is frequently fertilized with manure - animal poop. Any type of manure can contain bacteria that leads to food poisioning.
2. Even USDA certified organic produce can be sprayed with chemicals if crop failure is a possibility. (More on that here.)
3. Even if the produce wasn't sprayed with chemicals or fertilized with manure, many hands have handled it. If you bought it in a grocery store, the pickers, packagers, shippers, and grocery store clerks have handled it. If you bought it at a farmer's market, the growers and pickers handled it - and who knows how many customers, too. I guarantee you not all those people had clean hands.
The good news is, you don't need anything special to wash produce. As I've blogged about before, the best way to clean all produce of chemicals or bacteria is to wash it under warm, running water.
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