Why you should be washing your produce in baking soda.

I’ve never washed my fruit! Yep, I said it. I honestly didn’t know you needed to. That was until it became a big trend on TikTok, and I saw all the nasty stuff that was left in the water.

 I didn’t even buy organic produce for a long time. I grew up in a small town so it wasn’t something that was readily available or advertised. Then when my husband was accepted to pharmacy school we had to move closer to the city. We started shopping at Publix. Over the years Publix has added a ton of organic produce and products through their Greenwise brand which I absolutely love.

 We often buy our groceries and do grocery pickup through the Publix Delivery app. If you’ve ever tried any of these programs, you’ll know that often your items are replaced with other items due to the store being out of a product or your shopper being unable to find the product you selected. This time it was berries. I had selected to have the organic strawberries and blueberries but unfortunately, Publix was out.

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but strawberries and blueberries are both on the DIRTY DOZEN™-EWG's 2023 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™. Don’t know what this is? No worries, I didn’t either until about a year ago. The Dirty Dozen is a list of produce that contains the most amount of harmful pesticides, which can cause cancer and are endocrine disruptors. Strawberries top the list in the #1 spot and blueberries made the list this year and come in at spot #11.

 So since my produce isn’t organic like normal… I think I’ll wash it.

 I did lots of research trying to find the best way to wash my fruit. I watched lots of different videos on TikTok that showed how to wash fruit using: vinegar and baking soda, baking soda, ultrasonic devices, and storebought produce cleaners. I decided to research and try baking soda because it sounded the simplest, I already had some in the pantry, it’s cheap, and wouldn’t leave anything with a funky taste.

Turns out that using baking soda is a studied technique in cleaning produce. There was a recent study done by the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry that tried multiple different ways to clean fruit including water, bleach, and baking soda. It turns out that baking soda was the most effective at removing pesticides!

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Just take a bowl and add a colander to the top. Add clean water so the water fills the bowl and comes up through the colander. Add your producer (not cut or peeled) with a few teaspoons of baking powder. Let soak for 10-15 minutes. Then rinse and dry your produce and store accordingly. There was definitely dirt and debris that came off of my strawberries, luckily not bugs like I’ve seen in some videos.

Consensus: Wash your produce, even when it’s organic, but especially when it’s non-organic.

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