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Packaged salads are not nearly as clean as their
“pre-washed” and “triple-washed” labels suggest.
Recent Consumer
Reports’ tests found bacteria that are “common indicators of poor
sanitation and fecal contamination” in many
of the packaged salad greens it tested.
The nonprofit group tested 208
containers of salad greens and found that 39 percent of the samples exceeded acceptable
levels for coliforms
and 23 percent had unsafe levels of enterococcus.
On a positive note, these tests didn’t find disease-causing bacteria such as E.coli O157:H7, listeria, or salmonella in any of the
samples.
“It’s never a good idea to have fecal bacteria in your food
or water because it means that untreated waste has gotten into them somehow,” says
food
safety expert Marion Nestle. “But only toxic bacteria make you sick, and the
good news in this otherwise queasy-making study is that they didn’t find any.”
No one is suggesting that you stop eating salad. Just take some
of the precautions below to make sure you’re eating the safest greens possible:
-
Always
wash salad greens, even if the bag says “prewashed” or “triple-washed.” Rinsing won’t remove all the bacteria, according to Consumer Reports, but it may remove residual soil. Washing with plain water works as well as
anything else, says Nestle. There’s no need to use detergent,
vinegar, or special produce washes. -
Buy
packaged greens as far from their expiration date as possible. In the
tests, Consumer Reports found that
many packages with higher bacteria levels were one to five days before their
use-by date.Packages of salad that were six to eight days away from expiration
date fared better, according to Consumer
Reports. (It’s also
interesting to note that many of the packages with the highest amounts of
bacteria contained spinach.) - Choose fresh greens over
packaged when you can. Bagging changes the environment in ways that might
promote bacterial proliferation, says Nestle. A fresh, whole head of lettuce is usually less expensive than a
bag of lettuce too.Buying local may offer extra
protection since greens tend to be fresher so their bacteria haven’t had as
long an opportunity to multiply, Nestle notes, and this ought to reduce the risks of
centralized contamination. However, in the Consumer Reports tests, it didn’t make a difference if greens were organic or if
the greens were packaged in plastic clamshells or bags.
Environmental journalist Lori Bongiorno shares green-living tips
and product reviews with Yahoo! Green’s users. Send Lori a question
or suggestion for potential use in a future column. Her book,
Green Greener Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-smart Choices a
Part of Your Life is available on Yahoo!
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