Increased Radiation leading to more indoor farming controlling conditions with filtered water and clean soil. I learned the importance of soaking fruits and vegetables from my friends father who professed at FIU here in Miami. One day i was over his house and i observed in his kitchen some mangoes that were sitting in a tub of water. I said what is this? He told me his father did this after finding out all the pesticides that were present on the skins of plants and vegetables “fungicides and pesticides” Dr. Dominic believed a simple washing is not enough.
Apple skins still contained pesticides over 90% of the time even after a simple rinse. Here are a few ways you can keep your produce free of pesticides, chemicals and bacteria’s. Get a veggie scrub brush! Make a solution of 3 parts filtered water and 1 part distilled vinegar. You can use apple vinegar as well. Depending on the fruit you can soak them in this solution for a few hours and then scrub them with the brush. The Vinegar solution will remove over 97 % of the bacteria.
If you want to remove even more from the skins of your plants you can spray your produce with hydrogen peroxide 3 % and then rinse off in filtered water. Then soak your produce in the vinegar solution and rinse off with clean water. This is the most effective method and even works better than bleach or chlorine.
Be cautious with fruits and vegetables grown outside of the United States! Imported produce tends to have even higher amounts of pesticides present on the plants. What is big in the news now is the story coming out of the “Coca Cola corporation” acknowledging that it’s “Minute Made” brand has been contaminated with a banned fungicide from its orange produce grown in Brazil.
Some people may wonder how does fungicide get inside the juice when it is sprayed on the peel. This happens in the squeezing process done by machines as the machines squeeze the rinds some of the outer essence of the rind gets mixed in with the juice.
If you like to eat salads it is even more important to wash your produce with filtered water. Salad spinners can help you wash your lettuce. I recommend washing your lettuce three times and adding clean water and vinegar each time to remove the most impurities.
I would be careful not to use just plain tap water. As convenient as it might be tap water is not really a pure water source going through old pipes and can actually carry the bad things you are trying to eliminate from your produce. Miami water has over 40 known pollutants and a lot higher than the national average of toxic substances. The best way to protect yourself is to clean the water at your source with an advanced filtration system.
I was pretty stunned watching the “Dr. Oz Show” finding out how toxic imported apples were. It Baffles my mind that Juice is allowed to be three times more toxic than water. What is shameful is this juice was made for babies to digest and this could cause defects in a young baby’s life. High amounts of arsenic and lead in our water and our foods is unacceptable. Buy organic when you can and local produce. Your better off getting a juicer and preparing your own fresh juice to avoid ingesting harmful pollutants. Also you will love the freshness and the flavor of your juice a whole lot more.