How to Clean Fruit with Vinegar

Hi, I'm Dave Epstein. This is Growing Wisdom. You know many of us are obsessed with keeping things clean and sometimes we over do it but there’s also valid reasons. We hear a lot in the news about problems with food-borne illnesses and you definitely want to wash these guys before you eat them.

Now, you can just run them underwater and that will take care of many of the problems that you might have. But scientists have discovered that you could use white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. Spray a little bit of vinegar on the fruit or vegetable and then spray a little bit of hydrogen peroxide on it right after that. Then rinse it off in water and that will clean off the vinegar or the hydrogen peroxide. It's not harmful if you eat it. It just doesn’t taste so good.

Voila! You’ve taken things like salmonella and E Coli right off of your fruit and vegetables. You can also use it on surfaces. So if you're doing food preparation and of course you want to clean the counters first, spray a little bit of vinegar then a little bit of hydrogen peroxide, wait just 10 seconds. Wipe it clean and you're good to go. You’ve taken care of many of those harmful elements and think about the cost. A gallon of white vinegar is only about $2.00 to $2.50 and hydrogen peroxide, a little bottle like this is only around $0.99.

For spray bottles, go out. Buy a clean spray bottle. Don’t reuse a product which had chemicals in it. You don’t want to do that; or you can buy actual sprayer. I cut the bottom. Put it in the hydrogen peroxide bottle and I use that to spray right out of the hydrogen peroxide bottle.

In terms of strength, you can use the hydrogen peroxide directly. You don’t have to dilute that. With the vinegar, some folks say you can use it all full strength even on fruits and vegetables. I like to dilute it on a one to two ratio. So, if you have a cup of water, I put in half cup of vinegar.

One question you might have is “can I just mix the vinegar and the hydrogen peroxide in one single bottle and pray that?” The answer is absolutely no. It creates peracetic acid and that can be actually very harmful. It's okay if you spray them one after the other but putting them in the same bottle is actually very harmful.

So there you have it. Instead of using the chemicals that you find out there in the supermarket or even some of the organic products, this is a much more cost effective way to keep your fruits and vegetables clean before you eat them and keep your countertops, other surfaces clean before you prepare your food.

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