Did You Wash Your Avocado Before Eating?
Yes, you need to wash your avocado before you eat it. That tough skin doesn’t mean anything! This post from Cosmopolitan highlights the need for safe prepping the fruit.
Sunday morning’s only mean one thing – avocado for brekkie. Whether it’s smushed, sliced, smashed, crushed or mashed, it’s all kinds of delicious – but did you give it a wash before you popped it on your toast?
With that mega tough skin (it’s basically the rhino of the fruit world), you might think that avocados don’t need a clean before eating, but it turns out that cutting open an avocado without washing it could put you at risk of bacteria and even food poisoning.
The skin is thick and rubbery enough to mean that harmful chemicals generally don’t penetrate to the fruit itself, but the bumpy texture can harbour all sorts of pesticides and bacteria that you probably don’t want as your avo toast topping.
Cutting through all of this without washing the skin means that your knife is the first thing to pick up all of the dirt and grime – which then goes on to slice straight through the avocado flesh, and maybe even the rest of your breakfast.
The Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in its guide to peeling and pitting avocados (yep, that’s a thing), recommends thoroughly washing avocados before eating them.
To avoid a sprinkling of nasties on your brunch, just use cool or lukewarm water to gently scrub the surface of the avocado before cutting. Aaaand now we’re hungry.
Source: Yes you need to wash your avocados before you eat them, and here’s why
