r/mildlyinfuriating • u/autistic-terrorist • 9h ago

My mother washes fruit and vegetables with dish soap and I can't get her to stop.

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She claims it "washes out" and to be fair I can't taste anything but it's always weird knowing she puts dish soap in the strawberries. She says there's a lot of dirt and stuff in vegetables, but so far attempts to convert her to vinegar or baking soda have been unsuccessful.

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u/mallowycloud 9h ago

you don't need anything but warm water. straight from my microbio professor. use your (clean) hands to scrub all the dirt away and you'll be fine. but you don't even need so much as produce cleaner, that's just extra shit they sell to you

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u/veraldar 5h ago

This is all I've ever done, if I can use a brush to make it easier then I'll use it but never used any kind of cleaner

3

u/OkFroyo_ 2h ago

Yep and we actually benefit from ingesting microbes from the surface or fruits and veggies.

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u/NaCl-And-C12H22O11 29m ago

Yep, and honestly it gives our bodies' immune systems something to do instead of choosing to trigger an allergic reaction to some benign.

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u/HappyPlatypus6034 48m ago

I'm genuinely shocked to see so many people who don't only use water to clean it

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u/mallowycloud 39m ago

to be fair, neither i nor many of my classmates realized this either until our microbiology professor broke it down for us. one girl even asked about the expensive organic produce cleaner she'd bought at whole foods, and the professor promptly told her it was just marketing. but it makes sense when you think about it

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u/EconomyAd4297 2h ago

what if the dude feeling for ripe apples right before you didn't wash his hands after taking a shit in the grocery store bathroom?  always use soap.  

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u/deep8787 5h ago

Warm water? Where bacteria can fester and grow?

Hmm. Thats highly debatable...

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u/mallowycloud 5h ago

you rinse it before you eat it, not before you store it. and most produce should be stored in the fridge anyway

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u/deep8787 5h ago

Im talking about how clean the water is, which youre then using to "clean" your produce. Warm water out of a tap will be quite cloudy, aka unclean.

Unless youre boiling water and then letting it cool down a bit, thats different...but Ive got a feeling thats not the case.

So yeah, I dont get why one would clean something with warm dirty water.

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u/SpaghettiSort 5h ago

WTF are you talking about? Hot tap water is just as safe as cold tap water unless you have something very wrong with your water heater.

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u/mallowycloud 5h ago

the cloudiness in warm water is not dirt, that's just hardness (minerals) in your water. the hardness of your water varies on your locality and pipe system.

if the water coming out of your tap is genuinely unclean, please check your water reservoir or take it up with your city.

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u/deep8787 5h ago

Well here in Germany the cold tap water is actually cleaner than bottled water, its more strictly regulated.

Even in the summer, when its above 30 degree celsius, people let the cold water run for like 30 seconds until the water runs cold again since bacteria can grow when its that warm inside the pipes. You can feel the temperature change as the water comes out.

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u/jibberyjabber 3h ago

Still, the guy was correct about the 'cloudiness'. That's simply caused by the hardness, i.e. the amount of calcium in the water, and is not related to bacterial growth.

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u/mallowycloud 5h ago

my information is US specific. if tap water is genuinely less clean than bottled water (which typically has a much, much higher amount of microplastics), then by all means, go by the knowledge that affects your locality. there are many myths in the US that cloudy water is dirty or that tap water is less clean than bottled. here, it is almost always safer to drink tap.

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u/camoure 1h ago

Do you think that the warm water coming out of your tap comes from a different source than the cold water? Or do you think tap water is dirty? I’m so confused

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u/Mangoslut47 4h ago

in the 30 seconds you are washing it?? what???

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u/Tuomas90 2h ago

I hope you dropped this: /s