Kitchen Think: Are you a Rewasher?
Do you wash your bagged lettuce?
Some of us take the bag’s ‘triple-washed” promise at it’s word and just dump the lettuce into the salad bowl and have at it.
Others, like Mama, desperately want to believe that the bagged lettuce is clean, but just can’t trust what it says on the bag completely. I mean, lettuce isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can scrub like a potato.
Who’s right?
The folks California’s Center for Consumer Research say that what comes out of the bags is often cleaner than your own kitchen. Think about it: your hands, salad spinner, sink or cutting board may not be as clean as you think. By rewashing the lettuce, you actually may be contaminating the already-clean lettuce.
But still, I’m nagged by the fact that a lot of bagged-lettuce is treated with an antimicrobial agent like chlorine. This removes most of the bacteria or microorganisms that might get you sick, but that means your lettuce has had a chemical bath… that’s a little unsettling.
Honestly, I usually buy an entire head of lettuce and wash it myself. A pain in the rear all the way around… but at least I know that it’s clean by my standards. Introducing one less chemical into my family’s food system is always a good thing.
So… are you a rewasher?
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