Use this common household item to improve your eating

Baking Soda is a standard household item. It’s commonly associated with baking and cleaning around the house. For some of us, it is also a go-to product for cheap and efficient toothpaste.

And now there is one more use for baking soda, stripping pesticides from fruits and vegetables.

Behold, the mighty baking soda!

It’s no secret there are a lot of pesticides sprayed onto fruits and vegetables on commercial farms. Even farms that specialize that use organic farming techniques use pesticides to control weeds and bugs. However, just because an organic farm uses a pesticide doesn't mean it's healthy.

Now, science is telling us baking soda is the best solution for cleaning pesticides off of fruits and vegetables. According to a report in Popular Science, scientists tested various methods of cleaning commercially grown produce, and the most effective cleanser was baking soda and water.

Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate, mixed with water is the most efficient way to remove pesticides. The study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry indicated that researchers found that soaking Gala Apples in the baking and water solution for 15 minutes removed a majority of the pesticides.

The researchers stressed this wasn’t the case for all fruits and vegetables, only the Gala apples.

However, the solution did do a much better job than other washes. The reason not all of the pesticides were removed is that a tiny amount of the pesticide does seep into the cells of the skin of the apple. No cleanser will remove the pesticides once it enters the cells of produce.

The only way to completely remove pesticides is to skin the produce.

However, that takes time and isn’t as easy as washing and soaking. Also, for some food, peeling the skin off can affect the taste of the fruit.

During the research, two other methods of cleaning were also used. The first was washing produce using water. The second was using a bleach-based solution similar to those used in commercial farming.

The baking soda solution outperformed both of those methods.

What this means for people concerned about pesticides

What does this mean for families worried about pesticides in their produce? Wash and let the fruit soak in the baking soda solution for about 15 minutes. If there is concern about the amount of pesticide that absorbed into the skin of the vegetable, then peel the skin off the produce.

Remember, thoroughly cleaning all of the pesticides off of produce is near impossible, but the baking soda solution seems to be the most effective method.

For families that want to know precicely what is in their produce, the best bet is to grow their produce. Then they are in complete control of any chemicals used during the growing season.