New instructions, use food and drink by use by date!

Sorry not new, just reminder on taking care due to
E.coli infections rise due to salad leaf outbreaks news.

WASHING salad leaves is a given
Plus, old fashioned hand washing.

I never buy pre washed bagged salads- always fresh and I wash, check and spin dry. Takes so little time.

When I worked at the airport for in flight catering we had to thoroughly sterilise the lettuce.

How did you do that MayBee70?

I’ve wondered how sterilising worked too. I try to wash fruit throughly and wonder how restaurants etc clean salads/fruits because it takes me long enough just washing a bowl of leaves including the ‘pre washed ‘ bags.

I m not sure how I ve lived to 80

It was a long time ago. But I think we put some sort of tablet in the water; bit like bleach. I once cut my finger really badly [still got a scar in fact] and nobody was worried about my finger, just the fact that I'd contaminated the lettuce. I now buy little gem lettuce and soak it in salt and vinegar. Bean sprouts are quite dangerous, too, I believe so bags of stir fry have to be cooked thoroughly.

I think you can buy something for sterilising fruit etc?

Just read that you can use baking soda.

I ve never washed salad just eat it out the fridge Why would you put bleach in your food ?
Oh dear I m a goner

I'm not sure that it was bleach. It just smelled bleach'y. And it wasn't going to be eaten straight away so they had to be careful. A whole plane full of people with food poisoning would not be a very nice place to be...

A little bit of dirt does you good. Can that be true? I ate one day past the sell by date profiteroles my future DIL bought me from Waitrose. I’m not a big fan of puds but I am still here.

They used Milton in the salad prep kitchen at the hospital for leaves. They went into a big sink.
Cut my finger quite badly on a mandolin there too slicing - of all things, tomatoes!🤬
Very wary of mandolins since.
Salad spinners are rather useful gadgets though

I got a salad spinner from a charity shop. But the bowl has got holes in the bottom so I have to put it in another bowl ( that’s obviously why it ended up in a charity shop). So I bought another one off the internet but it’s a bit big for the small amount of lettuce that I eat.

Mention of salad spinners reminds me of one of my daftest moments in the kitchen.
I'd washed some raspberries and needed them dry to fill meringue nests along with some whipped cream. So I put them in the salad spinner ....
Raspberry purée, anyone?
😲

I usually eat the pre washed salad stuff straight out of the packet except for spinach which I always rinse first because they had a scare and a recall because of E coli in prewashed spinach a while back. I always rinse soft fruits in case they have spray residues on them.

I suspect the “bleach” smell would be a solution, similar to the sterilising solution used for baby bottles.

Personally I think you need do nothing more than a couple of changes of water.

When we were stationed in Belgium, we’ll before the advent of bagged salad, we were advised to wash all salad leaves and other leafy vegetables in Milton due to the practice of growers there using night soil as a fertiliser. I kept the practice up for a long time after we left there.

I always wash fruit and veg before eating or cooking. It's how I was brought up . I know it was because veg came with dirt when I was young plus strong pest control chemicals . Even if something is organic I still wash it .

MayBee it was probably a chemical they used to sterilise water or babies bottles .

Love it, same here

I wash all salad leaves before eating. Tomatoes and apples too.

Lollin

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn72m1e3ylko

Oh the rubbish being reported!

26% terrible, the figures quote show that is just scaremongering if you look at total figures!
" infections rose from 2,018 in 2023 to
2,544 in 2024 in England."

And then, we are NOT designed to eat sterilised food!

"This could be because young children's bodies have less time to build up protection against infection"
OK, but it goes on:
"... they are less likely to wash their hands properly or because they're more exposed to risks such as animals at petting farms.

Blaming animals again! It's exactly by NOT being so hygienic that children build up their immunity!!!!

What rot!

I never wash any veg or fruit, unless it’s veg straight out of the ground with dirt, possible baby slugs, beetles or other bugs in on it.
Never had a problem, but I don’t buy bags of salad, too expensive for very little.