Baby carrots get dipped in chlorine bleach?

annah1212
annah1212 Posts: 6
edited September 20 in Food and Nutrition
Baby cocktail carrots are made from deformed full sized carrots that have been permeated with chlorine to reduce the contamination of the finished product. :huh: According to the food inspection agency the use of chlorine as an antimicrobial treatment is a current accepted practice for all fresh cut, ready to eat veggies. And that chlorine amounts are at a level that can be ingested safely. (I dont want to eat chlorinated carrots!) I heard about this through email but did not realize how true it is. Gpogle it and make the decision for yourself. I dont want to worry about wether or not I am buying bleached dipped veggies so all the more reason to go organic.

Replies

  • nisijam5
    nisijam5 Posts: 9,964 Member
    I wrote the the company about this...they state that chlorine is in the water used to wash the carrots...you can go to the bolthouse website and inquire if you would like
  • byHisgrace
    byHisgrace Posts: 175
    What do you wash veggies in at home? I'm guessing the amount of cholorine in comparable to that of tap water. Sorry but I am so weary of these email scares. Watch Food, Inc., Fast Food Nation or read some similar books. All food we buy in the grocery store is processed in some way and picking on individual items is somewhat decietful. I'm not picking on or admonishing the OP, I know there are a million of these emails that go around and genuinely scare people, I just think it's unfortunate.

    I also love how it uses the term "deformed carrots" as though that makes them less worthy of consuming. That very statement speaks volumes about the American perception of what food is, where it comes from and what it should look like, and why we are eating ourselves to death. Twinkies are a pretty blonde, don't eat those deformed carrots, lol.
  • sdirks
    sdirks Posts: 223 Member
    http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/260034

    Baby carrots are made from full sized carrots that have been fed through a machine which cuts them to size.

    Because carrots are grown in dirt, they are washed in order to be sanitary before point of sale. The sanitization bath DOES contain chlorine. So does tap water. The bleach residue left by your dishwasher also contains chlorine. If you drink 1 cup of coffee a day from a dishwashing-machine-washed mug, you are ingesting the equivalent of 2tablespoons of Chlorox Bleach per year. Drinking 2 tablespoons of bleach is obviously bad for you, people, but spaced out over the course of a year, it hasn't killed you yet, right?

    This is a silly panic of misappropriated facts and stretched datum. Someone's just jerking you around, trying to scare you with this "baby carrots are soaked in bleach" nonsense. Trust me on this, folks--I work in marketing and do this kind of research for a living. Baby carrots and other pre-cut veggies are safe to eat. The levels of chlorine bleach used to sanitize the food is not harmful. You encounter chlorine every day and it hasn't hurt you yet. Please don't freak out. I probably inhaled a tablespoon of bleach cleaning my bathtub last night, and I'm down half a pound this week.

    :eyeroll:
    Use your brain.
  • tiffanygil
    tiffanygil Posts: 478 Member
    LOL...I'll continue to eat them. Hasnt killed me yet! If you listen to everything people say about foods you wont be able to eat anything, fresh, frozen or processed!
  • nisijam5
    nisijam5 Posts: 9,964 Member
    Twinkies are a pretty blonde, don't eat those deformed carrots, lol.

    I think twinkies would last longer in a landfill than a carrot
  • drvvork
    drvvork Posts: 1,162
    When I would help Mom can we would use bleach-water to rinse (not soak) different veggies - if they were deformed or split - mainly tomatoes or carrots... this prevented the set in of botulism in the canning process or if Mom was cooking them for dinner it killed out any unwanted bugs / bacteria that might have taken start. Besides pesticides - this is another reason to make sure all veggies are washed thoroughly.
  • byHisgrace
    byHisgrace Posts: 175
    Also, Oganics are only as good as the honesty of the grower. There are no sampling tests going on. Organic certification, where crops are concerned, is ALL based on paperwork completed by the producer. Meats get random swabs by USDA but even that is hit and miss.

    Now, most organic farmers are truly organic. It's not a cheap or easy process. Still, know your grower, join a CSA, buy at the farmer's market. Supermarket organics, especially those that come from outside the US, are HIGHLY suspect.
  • sdirks
    sdirks Posts: 223 Member
    Twinkies are a pretty blonde, don't eat those deformed carrots, lol.

    I think twinkies would last longer in a landfill than a carrot

    The carrot may kill you before the bleach has a chance to sink in.
    http://dailydiatribes.wordpress.com/2007/11/04/what-if-i-choke-on-a-carrot-and-die/

    Again,
    :eyeroll:
    Use your brains, people. It's so simple, it hurts. Veggie = Good.
  • paddlemom
    paddlemom Posts: 682 Member
    Yep, just think about how many e.coli recalls there were this past year for vegetables....personally, I'd rather eat the bleach. Think about how many times you have cleaned your hands with hand sanitizer, then picked up an apple....
  • courtney_love2001
    courtney_love2001 Posts: 1,468 Member
    I take the bleach over the microorganisms any day! When I went hiking in the mountains for a week, we added drops of bleach to our stream water to sanitize it. It smelled like bleach, but I was okay drinking it. I eat baby carrots everyday, so I hope this is okay too! I buy organic when I can, but they probably wash their carrots in some kind of anti-microbial as well (I'm just assuming here, but they have to be sanitized some way).
  • sarahspeace
    sarahspeace Posts: 19
    hmmm well if the chlorine is in the water that washes the carrots, then the carrots are absorbing the chlorine & if we're eating those carrots, we are getting chlorine into our system. chlorine is a toxic chemical, which is why i use my brain and avoid it as often as possible. the water in my house is filtered, i do not swim in chlorinated swimming pools, only use chlorine-free products, & only eat organic produce. organic growers typically use a very effective citrus based non-toxic solution called citrox to wash carrots. do i avoid all chlorine everywhere all of the time? probably not, but i believe my health is better by avoiding it when i can. there is a lot of legitimate information out there about the negative effects of chlorine worth checking out.
  • byHisgrace
    byHisgrace Posts: 175
    Twinkies are a pretty blonde, don't eat those deformed carrots, lol.

    I think twinkies would last longer in a landfill than a carrot

    I was being sarcastic. Twinkies aren't even food in my book, or in the book Twinkie, deconstucted, another great food read. Imagine what out world, and waistlines would be like if more people got their food information from legitimate sources rather than email.
  • nisijam5
    nisijam5 Posts: 9,964 Member
    Twinkies are a pretty blonde, don't eat those deformed carrots, lol.

    I think twinkies would last longer in a landfill than a carrot

    I was being sarcastic. Twinkies aren't even food in my book, or in the book Twinkie, deconstucted, another great food read. Imagine what out world, and waistlines would be like if more people got their food information from legitimate sources rather than email.

    I was being sarcastic too...however, I did hear something about twinkies having a very long shelf life...that's what made me think it
  • byHisgrace
    byHisgrace Posts: 175
    Twinkies are a pretty blonde, don't eat those deformed carrots, lol.

    I think twinkies would last longer in a landfill than a carrot

    I was being sarcastic. Twinkies aren't even food in my book, or in the book Twinkie, deconstucted, another great food read. Imagine what out world, and waistlines would be like if more people got their food information from legitimate sources rather than email.

    I was being sarcastic too...however, I did hear something about twinkies having a very long shelf life...that's what made me think it

    Ahh, sorry, I just didn't want you to think I actually meant that someone should eat one, lol. I too have heard that they could last almost forever, just getting stale but not really "bad". Scary, scary stuff, lol.
  • MTGirl
    MTGirl Posts: 1,490 Member
    http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/fooddrink/a/baby_carrots.htm

    Since some of us rely on the 'net for our info - here's the article from About.com. Yes, they are washed in chlorine water. So are you everytime you take a shower, if you have city water in any municipality in the US. Even organic foods can have E. coli and other dangerous bacteria on them, and the chlorine solution kills those bacteria. Yes, chlorine is a toxic chemical. So is fluoride, but in proper amounts it is beneficial. As is chlorine, in proper amounts.
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member
    I dare say you would ingest more chlorine swimming a day at the friendly community pool than you would by eating a wheel barrel full of baby carrots. Plus, carrots don't have human urine in them (that I'm aware of)! :tongue:
  • annah1212
    annah1212 Posts: 6
    this is very close to how I feel about the situation. And about the chlorine in your dishwater comment if we are using eco-friendly detergents this should not be an ingredient. I am trying to more natural guess I have to just keep growing my own.
  • byHisgrace
    byHisgrace Posts: 175
    this is very close to how I feel about the situation. And about the chlorine in your dishwater comment if we are using eco-friendly detergents this should not be an ingredient. I am trying to more natural guess I have to just keep growing my own.

    Was the dishwater comment based upon the detergent used or the water itself?

    I totally understand what you are trying to say and no one should be knocking living more natural, but I think the point is that there are these small amounts of seemingly harmful things in EVERYTHING.

    I love the emails that say things like "__________ contains the same chemicals used to make bombs (or insert other scary sounding item). The hard truth is that unless you are willing and able to grow all of your own food, from known heirloom seeds, in known uncontaminated soil, using purified (charcoal filter?) water and shielding from airborne contaiminants, you're gonna end up eating some stuff you probably wouldn't knowingly want to. The good news is, the amount of that stuff is probably largely insignificant.

    It sounds like you are cautious enough to not be eating things that have significant amount of things you think are harmful. So, really, have a carrot, it's ok :)
  • SHBoss1673
    SHBoss1673 Posts: 7,161 Member

    Was the dishwater comment based upon the detergent used or the water itself?

    I totally understand what you are trying to say and no one should be knocking living more natural, but I think the point is that there are these small amounts of seemingly harmful things in EVERYTHING.

    I love the emails that say things like "__________ contains the same chemicals used to make bombs (or insert other scary sounding item). The hard truth is that unless you are willing and able to grow all of your own food, from known heirloom seeds, in known uncontaminated soil, using purified (charcoal filter?) water and shielding from airborne contaiminants, you're gonna end up eating some stuff you probably wouldn't knowingly want to. The good news is, the amount of that stuff is probably largely insignificant.

    It sounds like you are cautious enough to not be eating things that have significant amount of things you think are harmful. So, really, have a carrot, it's ok :)

    you'd be shocked if you knew how much rat feces the average American eats a year.
  • LittleSpy
    LittleSpy Posts: 6,754 Member
    :laugh:
    This thread made me giggle (I promise I'm not trying to be a condescending jerk... I guess I don't have to try. :indifferent: ).

    For some strange reason it made me think of a news report I heard on NPR last year about how researchers had discovered that human hair makes a wonderful fertilizer for vegetable plants. But, apparently, it won't catch on because the American public is grossed out by it. I just kept thinking "What? Hair grosses them out? They DO know what is traditionally used as fertilizer, right?" I don't know about you guys, but it seems to me that poop covered food should gross a person out more than hair covered food.

    Oh, the public.
    :wink:
  • msarro
    msarro Posts: 2,748 Member
    Tap water and well water both get treated with chlorine (flouride too, and other things depending on your municipality). Swimming pools contain chlorine for algae control. Did you do your laundry recently? You most likely inhaled some chlorine. I think the benefits of carrots outweigh the negligible effects of a minute amount of chlorine.

    Also, baby carrots aren't always deformed carrots. Often they just chop up full sized carrots in processing because deformities aren't that common that they'd be able to meet the demand.
  • Mina133842
    Mina133842 Posts: 1,573 Member
    watch the show Life After people- I think it makes mention of Twinkie's on there... they'll last quite a while all right. :}
  • williams3023
    williams3023 Posts: 49
    I agree with jlb.

    Also, I understand that no one in this forum has died from the ingestion of chlorine, but how about diseases and cancer? Just because it is not killing you immediatley after you eat the food doesn't mean that you won't eventually die from it. The number of Cancerous deaths is expected to increase 45% since 2007 and I understand that this is not from eating carrots, but if people knew what the food they were eating did to their bodies over time, they might reconsider...
  • byHisgrace
    byHisgrace Posts: 175
    I agree with jlb.

    Also, I understand that no one in this forum has died from the ingestion of chlorine, but how about diseases and cancer? Just because it is not killing you immediatley after you eat the food doesn't mean that you won't eventually die from it. The number of Cancerous deaths is expected to increase 45% since 2007 and I understand that this is not from eating carrots, but if people knew what the food they were eating did to their bodies over time, they might reconsider...
    What about ammonia sprayed meats and artificial hormone laced dairy? I totally agree that I would love my food sans all of these things, chlorine included, but here in Michigan, growing my own food year round isn't really an option. Our food systems are what they are because people buy what's easy and cheap. What better investment than the food we nourish our bodies and health with??? Yet check the fourms and you will find countless complaints (with some validity) about the high cost of eating healthy. We have the power to vote for chlorine free carrots but very few will actually do it. The issues with the American food systems are so much bigger than most people want to know or talk about, and are responsible in large part for the cancer, diabetes and heart disease problems in this country. However the alteratives to traditional grocery store food are not cheap and easy and most people don't put their money where their mouth is on this issue...so really, let the carrots have some chlorine. there aren't enough people who really care enough to make real changes in our food production systems yet.
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