For some decades we've been hearing that you should wash your fruit and vegetables before using them. This story keeps getting stronger, with videos of people going to extremes. And then we hear that you should do it for fruit where you don't actually eat the skin. The knife picks up some pesticide as it cuts through, then some of that gets on the fruit you eat.
Well I can't believe I fell for that last one for a while. Imagine how little pesticide would get on a knife slicing through, and how little of that would then get on the fruit. What that story should have alerted me to, and did eventually alert me to, is that the whole thing is a scam. But if it is a scam, who benefits?
Who would want to portray fresh fruit as being associated with poison, and who would want to make it inconvenient to use fresh fruit for many purposes, and particularly for packed lunches for kids? Yes! It's the processed food industry, and their lackeys the supermarkets who only reluctantly got into selling fresh food which is much more of a hassle for them.
Well there probably is a small case for washing fresh food. Let's make the rule that IF you want to force suppliers to put "wash before use" on their produce then they must add a government endorsed label saying that substituting processed food is many time worse for health than not washing. And if there are campaigns on social media pushing this scam then the government should post the truth and if possible should force the social media to play that response to those who've been subjected to the scam.
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