the best disinfectant (was: how to clean my harsch crock?)

[Guest guest]

>Can anyone recommend a good cleaner for this that won't affect flavor or

>culturing? If you have a spray bottle recipe that would be helpful. Or

would

>straight vinegar be fine?

>Elaine

I don't know about whether it would affect flavor (so just rinse well

afterwards), but there was research a few years back that found that a

simple one-two combination of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide -- not mixed,

but sprayed one right after the other -- was THE most effective " kitchen "

disinfectant the researchers tested. Here's what my notes said (this is from

a Science News article...)

The article suggests using " clean " sponges, but I can't see any good reason

to keep such bug-breeding havens in a kitchen. I typically use disposables

like paper plates and towels if I'm really worried about the bugs (ground

meat, etc) or just a good scrub brush (which gets thrown into a high-temp

dishwasher cycle for sanitizing as needed).

Another sanitizing staple in our household is Citricidal -- grapefruit seed

extract. See these folks for more: http://www.nutriteam.com/citric.htm

http://www.nutriteam.com/index2.html

---

http://www.mcg.edu/services/ehs/newsletter/winter00.htm

Food cleaners-To clean dirt and residue off fresh vegetables sprinkle baking

soda on a wet paper towel and scrub or wash them in a bowl of cool water

with 2-3 tablespoons of baking soda, then rinse with clear water. A highly

effective disinfectant for food, counter tops and cutting boards is having

two spray bottles: one of vinegar and the other of 3% hydrogen peroxide.

Spritz fruits and vegetables, counter tops and/or cutting boards, first with

one and then the other (the order does not matter). Rinse fruits, vegetables

and cutting boards with running water. Wash counter tops with a clean wet

sponge. This has been proved to kill virtually all Salmonella, Shigella or

E. coli bacteria on heavily contaminated foods and surfaces, and does not

affect the taste of food. The combination of the two is 10 times more

effective than either chemical alone.

[References: Science News 9/29/96; Science News 8/8/98]

September 28, 1996

How to disinfect your salad

Between May and August, food containing the especially virulent E. coli

known as O157:H7 poisoned more than 8,500 individuals in Japan, including

6,000 children. This is the same strain of bacteria that tainted hamburger

sold at western outlets of a U.S. fast food chain in 1993 -- causing 700

illnesses and four deaths. But those were the prominent outbreaks. Since the

microbe's discovery in 1982, it has become increasingly common; in the

United States alone, it now accounts for some 20,000 cases of food poisoning

and 250 deaths annually.

Though usually spread via raw beef or feces, the recent Japanese outbreak

may not trace directly to either. Indeed, Japanese health officials reported

last month that white radish sprouts, popular in the local diet, might be

responsible. Perhaps those radishes had been fertilized with contaminated

manure.

It takes more than a tap water rinse to dislodge E. coli and many other

microbial squatters. Though high temperatures kill them, cooking is hardly a

viable answer for lettuce, sprouts, and tomatoes that go into your fresh

salad. For these and other foods that are be eaten raw, consider another

solution -- well, actually two solutions, to be delivered in tandem as

disinfecting sprays, suggests Sumner, a food scientist at Virginia

Polytechnic Institute and State University, in Blacksburg.

While at the University of Nebraska (which she departed last month), Sumner

worked out the recipe for just such a sanitizing combo.

Dianne s of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln applies the first of

two sanitizing sprays to lettuce. Credit: Univ. of Nebraska Inst. of

Agricultural and Natural Resources.

First, she squirts a vegetable with 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, the same

strength available at the drug store for gargling or disinfecting wounds.

She follows this up with a mist of mild acetic acid, also known as vinegar.

In truth, she says, which solution is sprayed first doesn't matter. Nor were

her sprayers very fancy; she used the kind that dampen laundry before

ironing.

The solutions represent an adaptation of a chlorinefree disinfection scheme

she had been working on for red meat, and which turned out to be effective

for decontaminating carcasses. In the course of her more recent studies,

Sumner found that vegetables not only tend to come from the garden or farm

bearing far more germs than red meat does, but they also hold onto germs

more tenaciously.

Overall, most germs that show up on produce come from the soil and are

benign. However, worrying that more toxic germs spread by feces could show

up in organic foods fertilized with manure, and realizing that there have

been reports of Shigella on cantaloupe and Salmonella on raw vegetables,

Sumner decided to develop a bactericidal treatment for restaurants and other

purveyors of salads.

In her tests, she deliberately contaminated clean fruits and vegetables with

Salmonella, Shigella, or E. coli O157:H7 -- all capable of inducing

gut-wrenching gastroenteritis. On its own, the hydrogen peroxide was fairly

effective against all three germs, she found. But the best results came from

pairing the two mists. For instance, she told Science News Online, " If the

acetic acid got rid of 100 organisms, the hydrogen peroxide would get rid of

10,000, and the two together would get rid of 100,000. "

" What I really liked about this treatment, " she adds, " is that every

[microbe] that drips off is killed. " So you're not just transferring

disease-causing contamination from your food to the sink, drain, or cutting

board. Speaking of which, she notes that the paired sprays work well in

sanitizing counters and other food preparation surfaces -- including wood

cutting boards.

As for taste, the peroxide didn't leave any lingering flavors and the

vinegar, when applied to the skins of tomatoes and peppers, proved hard to

detect. While the vinegar's trace could be picked up on lettuce, even that

isn't necessarily a major drawback, Sumner notes, especially if it's

destined for a salad to be dressed with a vinaigrette.

References:

, R. 1996. Japan's E. coli outbreak elicits fear, anger. Nature

Medicine 2(September):956.

s, D., S.S. Sumner, et al. 1996. Control of pathogenic bacteria on

fresh produce, a paper (abstract #168) presented in Seattle on July 2 at the

83rd annual meeting of International Association of Milk, Food and

Environmental Sanitarians.

Richert, R., J. Albrecht, S.S. Sumner, et al. 1995. Survival and growth of

E. coli O157:H7 on produce. 1995. Journal of Food Protection

58(Supplement):19.

Further readings:

Armstrong, G.L., J. Hollingsworth, and J.G. , Jr. 1996. Emerging

foodborne pathogens: Escherichia coli O157:H7 as a model of entry of a new

pathogen into the food supply of the developed world. Epidemiologic Reviews

18:29.

Raloff, J. 1996. <http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/9_14_96/bob2.htm>

Sponges and sinks and rags, oh my! Science News 150(Sept. 14):172.

Sources:

International Association of Milk, Food and Environmental Sanitarians

6200 Aurora Avenue, Suite 200

Des Moines, IA 50333-2863

E-mail: iamfes@...

Sumner

Department of Food Science and Technology

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Blacksburg, VA 24061-0418

E-mail: sumners@...

This week's Food for Thought is prepared by Janet Raloff, senior editor of

Science News.

<http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/9_28_96/food.htm>

http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/9_28_96/food.htm

s, D., S.S. Sumner, et al. 1996. Control of pathogenic bacteria on

fresh produce, a paper (abstract #168) presented in Seattle on July 2, at

the 83rd annual meeting of International Association of Milk, Food and

Environmental Sanitarians.

Raloff, J. 1996. How to

<http://www.sciencenews.org/Sn_arch/9_28_96/Food.htm> disinfect your salad.

Science News Online (Sept. 28).