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Pre-Sliced Mushroom's in the grocery stores...

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Mushrooms are one of the few that usually have quite a bit of dirt (visible) on them. A few minutes in a bowl, take them out, and quite a little pile in the bottom.
 
dullard said:
How long is your food safe and bacteria free after it has been baked and then stored in a warm moist environment?

Plus, I don't think many people care if their mushroom is in baked manure vs. fresh manure, if they are eating manure particles. To many people, it is the ick factor not the bacteria factor that matters. Otherwise we'd be having all kinds of people eating cooked things that most of us would never consider eating. Want a slice of Leonard Nimoy - it's been baked!
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Most people have no idea or interest in how the food gets from the farm to their plate. If they did, Chefs would get paid more and fast food wouldn't be so popular.
 
The reason you should wash your produce is because it is shipped in open packaging, in dirty cardboard, sitting in dirty trucks that are not always washed, sent to dirty distribution centers until they are finally shipped to stores for you to buy them. They are covered in filth long after they are washed.
 
Wash the show "Monsters inside me" and you'll be a little bit more germaphobic. Though TBH, I rarely bother to wash fruit/veggies. I probably should. There are some parasites that can even lay eggs in your eye ball (they get there through blood stream once you ingested something with that parasite) then the larva starts to eat your eye ball as food, till you go blind. All sorts of nastys out there. I think that particular parasite was from cat poop though.
 
lxskllr said:
I don't wash my vegetables.
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Sorry but that's kinda gross. You may never have gotten sick from it but if so its been good luck on your part more then anything else.

Getting sick from nasty stuff on raw veggies/salad mix etc is more common then you might think and just because it doesn't go crunch between your teeth doesn't mean its not there!


Edit: And on-topic, yes the reason sliced mushrooms don't get washed is if they stay wet they rot fast.
 
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It just comes down to good practices like washing your hands and covering you moth when you sneeze. Wash veggies and fruit. Even fruit with a peel if you're going to cut it with a knife like melons.
 
Probably a good idea to cut stuff before eating it too. I don't really bother but I might after this incident:

pjmVAgv.jpg


Close call.

Though bugs are probably not really dangerous compared to certain germs/bacteria/parasites. Then again most produce comes from the south where they do have poisonous bugs so you would not want to chomp down on something like a brown recluse or black widow or some exotic poisonous caterpillar or something that burrowed inside the fruit for example. This particular caterpillar just looked like a run of the mill every day caterpillar that you tend to see all over the place in summer.
 
You're just going through the motions if you think a rinse of cold water removes significant amounts of bacteria. Instead of washing your lettuce, take a science course. It'll be a *much* more productive use of your time.
 
Yeah don't know how much it really helps anyway. You'd have to pretty much use bleach if you want to kill off everything and I don't know if I'd want to do that. 😛

It's the same reason you're not suppose to wash raw chicken, all you're doing is splashing chicken bacteria all over your counters and sink, no matter how careful you are.
 
 
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Captante said:
Don't have to take anyone here's word for it:

http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299

http://www.livestrong.com/article/434569-why-is-it-important-to-wash-vegetables-before-eating-them/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14540742

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/879832



Food for thought ... even stuff you wouldn't always think of washing like melons can make you sick sometimes:

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/09/listeria-outbreak/#.VT2kSiFVhHw


But hey its your health not mine!
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"If you've got bacteria on the surface of fruits and vegetables, and you give them a wash with cold water, it removes some of what's on the surface," said Brendan Niemira of the USDA's Microbial Food Safety Unit in Pennsylvania. "Unfortunately, it [cold water rinsing] doesn't remove all of them, and that's a problem. If things are well-attached or living in a tight-knit community called a biofilm, that's going to be hard to get rid of."
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"Most bacteria can't be washed off," agreed Doug Powell, associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University. And although it happens rarely, bacteria in soil can also be taken up by the roots of plants and remain inside the plant's veins, where they would be impossible to remove by washing.
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http://www.livescience.com/8253-washing-lettuce-rid-bacteria.html
 
lxskllr said:
You're just going through the motions if you think a rinse of cold water removes significant amounts of bacteria. Instead of washing your lettuce, take a science course. It'll be a *much* more productive use of your time.
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No one is saying that washing veggies and fruit removes all of the contaminants. I am saying that washing fruits and veggies lowers the number of contaminants. If you can't be bothered to wash your hands, cover your mouth or, wash fruits and veggies, fine. Society will simply write you off as yet another waste of space (if your own bad habits don't get you first). However, attempting to present your lack of hygiene as science is down right silly (some might even speculate you suffer from trollitus).
 
I always intend to dip in a clean sink with vinegar and water solution, but I get lazy. I usually end up with a cold rinse followed by a thorough cooking session to a safe temperature.

I did find a good sized grasshopper in a head of romaine lettuce once. It was nestled down in the leaves.
 
I eat them raw anyway. Meh.

Cause everyone knows a rinse under tap water = sterile. If there were anything actually nasty on there its not like rinsing it with tap water is going to kill ecoli. I figure its just a liability thing. I've actually never heard of a mushroom related outbreak of germs.
 
MagnusTheBrewer said:
No one is saying that washing veggies and fruit removes all of the contaminants. I am saying that washing fruits and veggies lowers the number of contaminants. If you can't be bothered to wash your hands, cover your mouth or, wash fruits and veggies, fine. Society will simply write you off as yet another waste of space (if your own bad habits don't get you first). However, attempting to present your lack of hygiene as science is down right silly (some might even speculate you suffer from trollitus).
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No one is saying washing vegetables is harmful. I'm saying it has as much value as signing the cross, or waving some crow feathers over them. The difference between 600 trillion bacteria, and 400 trillion isn't worth the effort. You're practicing voodoo rinsing vegetables.

Use your fuckin' head. If a cold water rinse was sufficient, that's what a surgeon would do before operating. What do you do after you wipe your ass? Do you rinse under cold water, and pat dry, or do you wash for a length of time under hot water, and use soap? If a rinse did anything aside from make your superstitious head feel better, it would be SOP...
 
Red Squirrel said:
Wash the show "Monsters inside me" and you'll be a little bit more germaphobic. Though TBH, I rarely bother to wash fruit/veggies. I probably should. There are some parasites that can even lay eggs in your eye ball (they get there through blood stream once you ingested something with that parasite) then the larva starts to eat your eye ball as food, till you go blind. All sorts of nastys out there. I think that particular parasite was from cat poop though.
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Stop watching this BS

If parasites are so bad and EVERYWHERE, they would've effected your life in some way already.

Relax, those shows just scare you to death and inject more fear.

We get it, parasites are everywhere.......so fuckin what? They always have been and always will be.

Our entire bodies are ecosystems of bacteria/parasites/mites and other creatures.

No biggie😎
 
lxskllr said:
No one is saying washing vegetables is harmful. I'm saying it has as much value as signing the cross, or waving some crow feathers over them. The difference between 600 trillion bacteria, and 400 trillion isn't worth the effort. You're practicing voodoo rinsing vegetables.

Use your fuckin' head. If a cold water rinse was sufficient, that's what a surgeon would do before operating. What do you do after you wipe your ass? Do you rinse under cold water, and pat dry, or do you wash for a length of time under hot water, and use soap? If a rinse did anything aside from make your superstitious head feel better, it would be SOP...
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Regardless of how much bacteria it removes, it does remove dirt and larger foreign objects. And did you just compare vegetables and surgery? The digestive tract has multiple defenses.
 
lxskllr said:
No one is saying washing vegetables is harmful. I'm saying it has as much value as signing the cross, or waving some crow feathers over them. The difference between 600 trillion bacteria, and 400 trillion isn't worth the effort. You're practicing voodoo rinsing vegetables.
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You really need to stop exaggerating so terribly. If you want to exaggerate, strech the truth a bit. Don't completely make up random numbers that can be easilly disproven.

Bacterial reductions from washing food has been well studied. Lets compare actual study data to your fake data. I'll use leaf lettuce as an example since it is hard to wash well unless you break out each and every individual leaf and take a lot of time.

In your fake data:
* Bacterial count went from 600,000,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000,000.
* Bacterial count from washing with cold water dropped by 33.3%.
* In more common reporting methods, bacterial count went down by log10(600/400) = 0.176 log.

In study #1 (I'll use their median values of coliform bacteria):
* Bacterial count from washing with cold water went from 90000 CFU/g to 6500 CFU/g.
* Bacterial count from washing with cold water dropped by 92.8%.
* Bacterial count from washing with cold water dropped by log10(90000/6500) = 1.14 log.
* Washing instead by harsh chemicals (27% sodium hypochlorite) dropped bacterial counts by 99.2%.
* Link:
http://foodsci.rutgers.edu/schaffner/pdf files/Smith JFP 2003.pdf

Study #2 (Focusing on their water wash results):
* Bacterial count was often under 100 CFU/g.
* Bacterial count from washing with cold water dropped by 84.2%.
* Bacterial count from washing with cold water dropped by by 0.8 log.
* Link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14672238

Conclusions:
1) You overestimated bacterial loads by about a hundred million to a billion fold.
2) You way underestimated the effectiveness of washing by cold water.
3) Harsh free chlorine washing (99.2% reduction) wasn't dramatically better than just cold water (92.8% reduction). And neither were perfect.
 
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I know my produce has bacteria on it but I dont care. I will still wash it to remove dirt and foreign objects. if there is a reduction in bacteria simply by washing some of it off, great.

Hell, I've picked mushrooms growing in a forest and even mushrooms growing on a cow patty and eaten them without washing. Sometimes its good to work your immune system and give it some exercise.
 
Vdubchaos said:
Besides, bacteria is good for you. It makes your immune system stronger/better.

No bacteria = your system weakens...
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That's disingenuous at best and borderline dangerous at worst.

The elderly or immune-compromised could become seriously ill by ingesting food containing bacteria.
 
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