Attention germaphobes, concerned citizens, and persons of reasonable intelligence: Please DO NOT wash fruits, vegetables, or raw meats in your hot tub, jacuzzi, or shower/tub combo.
Yes, while a soak in your bubbly fun tub with the tickly jets is an excellent way to de-stress at the end of a long day in which you’ve been barricaded at home with the kids, it is NOT advisable to sanitize the outer layer of your Granny Smiths.
Please Note: It’s probably good practice to avoid washing it in that new bidet you recently installed amid the nation’s toilet paper crisis as well.
Produce Cleansing Option 1: In a recent New York Times California Today newsletter, a food safety expert suggests using a very diluted bleach solution (one teaspoon of bleach per gallon of water) to mist produce, and then let it air dry before eating.
COTR Response: Call us crazy, but eating bleach sounds like a bad idea. Plus, bleach can wreak havoc on dental appliances such as dentures, so that leaves House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out in the cold.
Produce Cleansing Option 2: Cook it or wash it thoroughly with warm water.
The CDC has advised that COVID-19 breaks down relatively easily with warm water and with heat.
COTR Response: Washing with warm water from your faucet – NOT YOUR HOT TUB – is preferable to ingesting Clorox.
Produce Cleansing Option 3: Buy that fancy fruit and vegetable wash they sell at Carmel grocery stores. It removes wax AND fully cleans the fruit. Alternatively, you can use vinegar, but it smells like holy hell.
COTR Response: Screw Carmel with their rich person, snotty, 1% fruit and vegetable wash! We’ll use vinegar: the fruit wash of the middle class.
COTR Pro Tip: Don’t use dish soap to wash your fruit. You’ll get diarrhea.
Common Sense from Dr. Tamika Sims, the Director of Food Technology Communications at the International Food Information Council:
“Yes, there can be a virus transfer risk if someone carrying the virus sneezes onto your produce and within hours you touch it and then immediately eat it — but the chances of this occurring are slim.”
And now, this important message from James Brown:
The Chicks on the Right explore this important public health issue in the clip below.
COTR Pro-Tip: Come prepared to laugh.
https://omny.fm/shows/chicks-on-the-right/experts-dont-wash-produce-in-hot-tubs
