Is water the best fruit and veggie wash out there?

[Cooking Goddess]

Because my "Search" skills stink, I apologize if this thread duplicates one I did not find.

When I stand and iron, I like to distract myself with TV or "radio". Last night I was watching a Canadian show on ION TV: "Anna and Kristina's Grocery Bag". They tested four ways of washing pesticide off of a bell pepper. After spraying the peppers with pesticide and letting it dry, they washed one pepper in each of four solutions. Two were commercially available formulas, one was homemade vinegar-water solution, and one was plain old tap water.

According to their evaluation, water is best. Surprised me!

If you want to see the link to their show summary, you can find it here. The one comment does raise some questions; no matter what the starting point of the pesticide was, it appears that water gets you to the lowest (cleanest) number.

 

[CharlieD]

did they use soap?

 

[taxlady]

did they use soap?

No, and the article said,

"Do not use regular soaps, detergents, or bleaches to wash produce. They absorb into the skin, are dangerous to ingest, and can react badly with food if cooked."

 

[GotGarlic]

The comment on that article is worth reading. Pesticides degrade pretty rapidly and rain washes them off. And people are not pests - in this context, at least So pesticides that interfere with insect metabolism, for instance, have no effect on humans.