Stop Eating Unwashed Fruit
Tempted to grab an apple or pear at a farm’s roadside stand and sink your teeth into it? DON’T! In a recent issue of Real Simple magazine, they assessed the risk factor of various actions, eating unwashed fruit being one of them, and it received their highest risk factor rating. As they said, “…if you don’t take an extra few seconds to wash off the fruit, you could be swallowing a lot more than juice - for example, soil that contains bacteria, bird feces, insect residues, and good old dirt.
If you get some animal waste in a bite, it can lead to a salmonella or canpylobacter infection, which can cause fever, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.” Ok, yuck. One doesn’t need any more convincing than that to spend the 30 seconds it takes to rinse off fruit before taking a big old bite. ‘Nuff said.
Photo from MorgueFile.com.
