Question: Do you wash bananas?

Well, I'll first be practical, I don't think I've ever eaten a banana right BEFORE my lunch. But I guess that's not the point. Any fruit that I will be eating the skin, I always wash, but Deedee, if you only knew how much rat feces and urine that the average American eats, you wouldn't worry about urine it on the skin anyway. Essentially Urine is sterile anyway, what you want to worry about is the feces, that's what carries the bad stuff. The only thing you can get from rat urine (or any animal for that matter ) is leptospirosis, and generally, the leptospirosis dies when the urine drys, it doesn't last very long in open air (a couple of minutes). Your more likely to get lepto from splashing in a puddle that a diseased rat peed into than from a banana that was peed on, on a cargo ship, FAAAAR more likely, and generally it's not a highly dangerous disease anyway (usually minor aches and chills, that goes away on their own).

You're far more likely to get the flu from the person next to you in the grocery store when you bought the banana's then from anything ON the bananas (or most fruits).

So I mean, YES wash fruit and anything consumed raw or unheated past 170 degrees Fahrenheit (the temp at which most bacteria dies), but don't obsess about it.

ah the obsess about it part...... that's what I began to do when I started reading and watching more and I had to simply accept that there are to many things to keep track of and I had to stop obsessing, it's easy to slide over to that side for me.

Gonna grab a 1/2 banana to take to the gym with me this morning., partly why I wont' watch the video!:noway: :huh: :laugh: :flowerforyou:

Are you eating the peels? Are you not washing your hands regularly? Then what's on the outside of a banana really doesn't matter....

Scenerio: The average person washes their hands before lunch. They sit down to eat lunch. Lunch includes a banana. They peel banana with hands, and eat banana. They then eat sandwich with hands. They then eat carrot sticks with hands.

I surmise that the average person does not get up BETWEEN the banana and sandwich and carrot sticks to wash their hands. Get rat pee on your hands during the banana peeling, and it is with you through the entire lunch. Ditto for your kids. Send them to school with pee contaminated food, and see if they get up to wash after peeling the banana, and before the rest of the meal.

What is on the outside of food DOES MATTER. But to each their own, I guess, when it comes to what they put into their bodies.

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ah and what about lettuce/salad type items, we better not get started on that, I'm having a yummy salad for lunch with a hardboiled egg. EEK

I know the stories on lettuce and such picked in the fields but again, I can obsses and so I have to simple do the best I can and be smart about it but not think to deep or I'd stop drinking my water as well. nah nah nah nah! Don't tell me about water! :glasses: :laugh:

Have a great day all! :drinker: :drinker:

I'm not going to wash the video because stuff like thats makes me actually lose my appetite for a few days to weeks. (I'm not exaggerating.)

That being said, I wash everything! Especially in the top of the bananas where they all connect. I have a fruit scrub brush and I scrub. Rat pee was never the reason. Flies and other insects can lay eggs/larva in there. I don't want that hatching in my fruit bowl. I had a major fruit fly situation here and just recently a carpet beetle infestation. (BTW, I don't have a single carpet in my house. They came from the grocery store.) I've seen spiders and flies in even the biggest chain grocery stores. I've also seen birds that somehow get into Meijers and they can't get them out. They obviously eat, pee, and poop somewhere while they are flying around up there. Not to mention the hands of the workers who place the produce in the bins, the bins are not washed, stuff falls on the floor and is put back in the bin.....

The only thing I don't go crazy over is homegrown stuff. If your food is coming from healthy soil, there are good nutrients in the soil, you don't have to worry about pesticides or herbicides, or how long it was sitting out. A quick rinse is good, but that is stuff I can eat straight from the garden. Honestly, I think that is the best solution to the contamination problem. If we grow most of our own, we don't need to worry about all that stuff. (Samonella and e.coli in vegetables? Thats just plain nasty!)

I don't think I'm obsessive, just conscious of the reality around me. Many people can eat contaminated foods and say they were affected by it. I went to a friends house for dinner to find out he cooked the food before he went to work that morning and it had been sitting on top of the stove all day long. Thats how they do it everyday and none of them ever get sick. I knew I didn't have the tollerance for that. We all have different tolerance levels depending on our level of exposure. I don't deny that exposure is good. You can't shield yourself from everything all the time. But to me, there is a thin line between exposure and just plain nasty.

We dont' have rats in Alberta
But no I don't wash it, it hasn't hurt me yet. Do you know certain foods like peanut butter have a certain percentage of bugs that are allowed to be in the product? You can't avoid all contaminants sorry to say.

I'll start worrying about where rats pee when human men start washing their hands after handling their bits and pieces.

I always wash my hands, but there are guys out there who just don't feel like their downstairs danglers are dirty.

There is people urine everywhere, mostly thanks to men.

Yes, I always wash bananas, as well as every other fruit and veggie that passes through my kitchen. For me, it's not something I obsess over, it's just become habit.

Cantaloupe is another BIG one that people don't think to wash, and probably should. The skin of the melon is a wonderful place for bacteria and other ickys to get comfortable in. When you run a knife through it, you can drag those ickys through your entire fruit.

In the United States alone, there are approximately 76 million cases of food-bourne illness every year. Roughly 5000 of those cases result in death. Yes, we live in a dirty world, no it's not healthy to be paranoid and obsessive about germs, but taking 5 seconds to wash any piece of fruit could save you a lot of misery. Even a mild case of food poisoning isn't fun.

l'll start washing bananas as soon as I start eating banana peels. lol
What doesnt kill you, makes you stronger.