I understand the idea of removing the basic dirt and grim that could still be left on the surface of the lettuce. But the idea that running the vegetable under the water has any help in sterilizing it has to be pseudoscience. Too many adults have this mentality that washing produce purchased from the grocery store drastically reduces your chance of food born illness. If your food is contaminated with harmful microscopic organisms in a food outbreak. I doubt washing it is going to change much.
Try this neat experiment out.
Cover your hand in a thick layer of Vaseline. Now drag it through some chocolate pudding. Finally rinse your hand off under a hot tap.
Do you have chocolate pudding left on your hand?
Sure, at a microscopic level you do. Even with the Vaseline. Will it kill your dog if you let them lick your hand? No.
The rinsing is to remove free bacteria from the surface with the dirt. You eat bad bacteria all the time, but your immune response kills it before it makes you sick because you have reduced the bacteria from 500ppm to 10ppm by rinsing.
This is completely different when that bacteria is on the inside, like when you fail to wash a melon and cut through it. Everything on the surface of the melon is dragged through the cut and embeds inside the fruit.
Always wash and rinse your produce.
I am not against the actual act itself. It’s more the mindless routine many people partake and advocate for without questioning it in the first place. It’s more a lack of critical thinking and understanding of the general public. Which I know is a criticism that goes well beyond this simple act.
