Washing Produce with Baking Soda
WHY BAKING SODA?
Baking soda is a safe, effective, and inexpensive way to remove a good majority of pesticide residue from your fresh fruits and vegetables. You may find it easiest to wash all your produce at once after a trip to the grocery store/farmers market. Or it might be just as easy to wash fruits and vegetables as you use them – either way is fine! Here’s how you can wash produce with a solution of baking soda and cold water (trust me, it’s easy!):
Step 1: Mix (2) teaspoons of baking soda with (4) cups of cold filtered water in a bowl.
Step 2: Submerge the produce in the solution and let it soak for at least 12-15 minutes.
Step 3: This is optional, but you can lightly scrub the produce using a brush for firmer produce, or just your fingers for more fragile produce.
Step 4: Drain and rinse the produce with cool water, then pat dry.
COST
Baking soda is a very inexpensive and highly versatile staple item for your kitchen. For example, you can purchase a 1lb box of baking soda from Walmart for just $0.97 which comes out to about $0.06 ¢/oz!
Using an example, here’s how much it would cost to wash a bunch of grapes using the steps above: 2 teaspoons (about .33 oz) baking soda + 4 cups of filtered water = about $0.02 per wash (at $0.06 ¢/oz of baking soda).
You can compare this cheap and effective baking soda solution with a store-bought 32oz “produce wash” that costs $7.99 ($0.25/oz). The “produce wash” is clearly more expensive and mostly just cleaver marketing with pretty packaging; it’s also not likely as safe or effective. For example: FIT Organic Produce Wash – 32oz – Ingredients: Purified water, organic sunflower oil, organic ethyl alcohol, organic glycerin, natural mineral (potassium hydroxide), citric acid, organic grapefruit oil. You truly do not need things like alcohol or seed oils to clean your produce!
EFFECTIVENESS
A study was conducted comparing the effectiveness of pesticide removal on apples using 3 different methods: bleach, baking soda (NaHCO3), and plain water. “The Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3) method is more effective in removing surface pesticide residues on apples” — https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b03118
Not only is baking soda safe to use, but it’s effective and very affordable. You likely already have some in your pantry! 🙂
