Washing fruits and vegetables. Seriously, what's the point?

[gic]

i wasn't joking in the slightest, I started vigorously cleaning melons years after a few people died where i was living from salmonella

The most recent serious cantaloupe salmonella outbreak i think was in summer 2012, killed 2 people and apparently listeria infections happen all the time from melons because of transfer from the skin to the fruit when cutting.

[gic]

Re Vinegar: authoritative article here (granted these were industry scientists)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9713753

survey with references here:

http://www.versatilevinegar.org/pdf/...%20Vinegar.pdf

so Vinegar seems to actually work pretty well from the abstract but to make it work best you have to salt the solution apparently which i will now start doing!

[Scrap]

I am completely for living a little closer to bacteria and whatnot - it's good for you to be exposed to it. That being said I vinegar wash my stuff because pesticides aren't something your body builds immune resistance to.

[Mucho Bocho]

Vinegar does not clean off pesticide residue from food. A surfactant is required to break the surface tension of non-polar compounds by a polar solution. oil and water don't mix. Vinegar just changes the pH but it's still a polar solution. That's why it kills pathogens.

To remove the pesticide warm/hot water with some sort of mild detergent and rinse well. This works for skinned fruits/veg. But lousy for leafy things. Those I choose to soak in salted cold water. Really all you can do anything for fresh herbs is rinse them.

I always salad spin my fruit/veg after they get washed. I do not use a vinegar solution to clean my foods. I do wash my chicken and all meat for that matter. My logic is in trying to reduce the bio load on the food rather than sanitize it by washing.