Always wash fruit/produce before you eat it?

I always wash fruit and vegetables before I eat them, even if they come pre-packaged. It’s just a habit, I guess, but it makes the food feel safer. (:

It is definitely true that if you wash berries and then store them, they will go bad faster. If you want to wash them, do it just before you eat them.

Wash fruit- organic or not, who knows who touched them in the supermarket?

And, like @mangeons it makes me feel safer.

I never do that and I have had no problems so far. What do I have an immune system for anyway?

Always wash your fruit and veggies. I wash right before I eat them. It’s true you do not want the produce sitting around wet, but you can wash it off and dry it, if you want to clean it before you are going to eat it. However, mushrooms should never be washed ahead of time. There was a study a while back that organic fruits and veggies were more likely to have higher bacteria levels than non-organic. Not to cause a panic, probably it is all within necessary limits since people rarely get sick, but just another reason to wash everything. And, I heard this along time ago, not sure if there have been any studies done to counter this one.

I thought I would add that I never use those special products for cleaning produce, I just use water.

I always wash it, just before I eat it.
Do not wash berries a head of time, they will go bad quickly.
@ava you are right, just because there are no pesticides doesn’t mean they are clean.
Birds poo and bats pee and poo, and so do the people who pick the stuff.
Yes, I have seen it, I do know this to be true.

hes probably right but id wash them just to be safe. with organic it seems there’d be less of a risk of them having feces from some mexican farmworker on them but you never know. i always forget to wash my produce and i never get sick.

I wash mine,but then drop it on the floor…lol!

I wash all of mine, especially the ones grown in the ground. Even organic fertilizer contains manure, and well… I draw the line at the possibility of ingesting cow poop.

@lucillelucillelucille Ten second rule!! :)

I wash all fruits and vegetables. I even wash meats.

Yes – the awfulness of mouthing someone’s feces fingerprints supersedes the pretentiousness ratio of water-to-berries.

Also wash oranges, bananas, melons, citrus, even tho you peal them. The growing, picking, transport, display, weird store customers all can introduce stuff you don’t want.

Anyone ever go picking berries? How many of them end up in your mouth instead of the basket? Did you wash any of them? Are you still alive?

I wash some produce to avoid pesticides, not from a fear of poo.

@Dan_DeColumna I also do that, at my own risk. The difference is that you know where your hands have been.
The chance of contamination is much less when handled only by you. You don’t really know where that produce in the store has been or who has handled it.

@wilma
And in the wild, tapeworm infested animals who contaminate the berries with their excrements which you can easly contract by eating the berries.

@ragingloli exactly, that is why in my first answer I said, ”Birds poo and bats pee and poo,” other animals as well.
Like I said, I sometimes eat what I pick, ”“at my own risk”.

Hey, you gotta eat a certain of germs in your life; it’s good for you.