Fit for Eating
Smug: that’s how I’m feeling right about now. A prophecy I once made (to myself, of course) has come to pass. I think that I may be a marketing genius.
A year ago, you couldn’t go into a produce section of any grocery store without seeing a display of Fit, a product advertised to rid fruits and vegetables of “unwanted residues caused by handling such as oils, wax, dirt, and pesticides.” The product was introduced in April 2000 by Proctor & Gamble for at-home use. At the same time, they also introduced a commercial product intended for the food-service industry that was advertised as an antibacterial produce cleaner.
I immediately said to myself; why would a produce manager want to display a product that inferred he might not think his produce fit to eat. And why would anyone buy the stuff when common sense and the major food- safety governing bodies such as the FDA, Canada Health & Welfare and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tell us simply to wash fruits and vegetables in clean water before eating, never with detergent.( Detergent may contain substances toxic to humans, and has never been approved for consumption.) As well, they encourage us to wash rinds and peels of any produce that will be cut into, even if we don’t intend to eat the outer coverings. Wash hands and work surfaces often while preparing foods and avoid contact between uncooked meats and foods to be eaten raw. It is even recommended to have two separate cutting boards; one for meats and one for produce. But they have never recommended the use of a special cleaning product for produce.
In the past few years, the incidence of Salmonella and E. Coli transmitted by fruits and vegetables has risen dramatically. This increase can be blamed largely on cross-contamination, either by direct contact with foods known to carry these pathogens, such as meats and eggs, or by poor food handling practices. There are now sometimes dozens of people handling a tomato before it gets into your salad: the pickers, packers, shippers, store clerks, other customers, and you! Just think of everything you have touched once you have entered the store: the coin you use to “rent” your cart, the handle of the cart, the dripping meat packages, the melons you squeeze and sniff to test for ripeness. And you seriously think that it is OK to just pop that grape unwashed into your mouth?
Get over it! We aren't living in the good old days any longer: the number of people handling everything from melons to chickens has risen exponentially. Where once we bought our fruit and eggs directly from the producer, and knew that only the farmer and his wife had handled a tomato, we now are buying from a huge network of people. When you buy an apple directly from a farmer on the island, you have reduced considerably the chance of cross-contamination. As soon as you buy that same fruit or vegetable from a store in Nanaimo, you have added several other hands into the equation.
I was in my grocery store a month ago and noticed that the displays of “Fit” were gone. I asked a young fellow working in produce if he knew what had happened to the product, and he rather sheepishly told me that his manager didn’t like having the product displayed quite so prominently in his produce section. He took me to the cleaning products section where he thought it had been relocated and we couldn’t find it. With a little research, I found that Proctor & Gamble had voluntarily pulled the product in September 2001, claiming that there just wasn’t a large enough market for it. This may be true, or it could be that the EPA, which takes exception to companies making antibacterial claims without a license, was making a move to fine all products that made unconfirmed and un-licensed claims. For whatever the reason, or maybe because we just used our common sense, we didn’t buy into the product. I just knew that we wouldn’t!
One of the things that I have learned in my reading (and deep down probably always knew), is that you should not be re-using food storage bags unless you have washed them carefully in soapy water, followed by a proper rinse and drying. Sometimes I wonder how my family has survived some of the food-safety blunders I have committed.