Safe and effective way to wash produce ….Today's post:  Tuesday, 11-21-2017 

1.  I once read that a woman used half hour baths in a water solution with chlorine bleach to wash produce.

It seems that some people still do this.

I thought that this was a horrible idea at the time.  She didn’t really show that it worked only that she thought it did.

The scent of chlorine bleach is one of the most disagreeable and unpleasant things I can imagine. 

It’s one of the few things that makes me feel like throwing up.  If that smell is in a room and cannot be washed or flushed or power-fanned away, I leave the room.

Not only that if there is a lot of it or I have to use it, I hold my breath and leave the room as soon as possible because I get instant asthma from breathing the fumes.

Recently, I found out this is no accident and that breathing chlorine bleach fumes can cause lung damage.

2.  Meanwhile even “organic” apples have something sprayed on them and then sealed in with wax.  “Conventional” produce has much of the herbicide and pesticide residue on the skins or just below it.

Trying to remove this with chlorine bleach is just replacing one harmful thing to eat with another.  And that’s if it works!

3.  Given this, an article that shows that:  No indeed, chlorine bleach does NOT work well for this grabbed my attention!

But what was even better is that a safer and cheaper and odor free solution DOES work and works way better on top of that!

Here’s the email I got with this wonderful good news:

I thought I’d post it today as some of you will be preparing Thanksgiving dinner in the next day or two and might like to use it:

“From: Health Sciences Institute

Sent: Fri, Nov 17, 2017 4:06 am

“It's the natural ingredient with more uses than vinegar -- baking soda!

Now, another use for good old sodium bicarbonate was just put to the test by some scientists from the University of Massachusetts, and it could save you from the toxic effects of a whole host of dangerous chemicals.

It turns out that baking soda can remove pesticide residue on fruit. You probably already rinse your produce under the tap, but plain ol' water can't wash away what Big Ag has left clinging to the healthy food you're about to eat.

Now, what the EPA has approved for pesticide removal is a solution of Clorox bleach -- which, believe it or not, is commonly applied to non-organic fruit after harvesting!

Yuck!

So, for the new study, the researchers took some organic apples and coated them with two toxic chemicals, the fungicide thiabendazole and the pesticide phosmet.

To remove them, they tried using bleach (again, the "official" way), plain tap water, and water with baking soda added.

Using high-tech testing methods, the apples were then checked inside and out for levels of the pesticides. The researchers found that the ones rinsed in the baking soda solution had the smallest amounts of the chemicals remaining, with 80 percent of the thiabendazole eliminated, and 96 percent of the phosmet removed.

And it didn't take a lot of baking soda, either -- just a 1-percent solution of it, which equates to about a teaspoon for two cups of water.

While baking soda has long been known as a non-toxic way to scrub ovens and kitchen counters, the way it worked on the apples, the scientists said, was that it made the force of the water much more effective in removing the surface residues (although some of the fungicide was found to have penetrated the skin).

Although this study was just about apples, there's no reason why you can't use a similar method on lots of other fruits and veggies.

Fill a large bowl with cool water and mix in a couple of teaspoons of baking soda. In that solution, you can soak celery, grapes, potatoes, peppers, cherry tomatoes, and lots of other fresh produce items for a couple of minutes, scrub them down, and be sure to rinse thoroughly.

It's something that could be a lifesaver, and it will only cost pennies!

Of course, one of the best ways to dodge eating foods contaminated with toxic pesticides is to buy organic whenever possible -- but it's especially important to buy organic versions of certain types of produce.

These four Thanksgiving staples landed on the Environmental Working Group's most recent "Dirty Dozen" list of produce found to have the most pesticide residues:

celery,

tomatoes,

sweet bell peppers, and

potatoes.

While organic fresh produce was, not too long ago, only available in high-priced specialty markets or health food stores, that's no longer the case.

You should have no problem finding a good selection of organic fruits and veggies at any large supermarket.

But, if what you need isn't readily available in the organic section, you can always go the baking soda route!

To Detoxing Naturally,

Melissa Young”

Whole Foods Markets does a good job of getting in much if not most of their produce from organic sources.

They sell a container with organic Thompson raisins for example.  Raisins are on that "Dirty Dozen" list of produce having the most herbicide and pesticides otherwise.  AND, they are in many holiday recipes, including some for Thanksgiving.

Also, what if you have someone who will be at your Thanksgiving dinner who must have zero soy or wheat or peanuts -- even processed in the same building but was organic to start with. 

These reactions can kill people.  So it’s really important to totally avoid those.

Are there raisins that are both organic and processed all by themselves to avoid this?  Mercifully yes there are!  We got lucky and found them by accident.  You can just learn what we found here:

Newman’s Own sells just exactly that:  “Organic raisins processed in a facility with NONE of those things.”  This is the company that Paul Newman and his wife and daughter created.

Not everything they sell is perfect.  But they are almost always good or better than most.  This is one of their products I think deserves to be on some kind of honor roll!