Poll: Do You Rinse Head Lettuce Before Eating?

  • Thread starter DaveC426913
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In summary, if you buy head lettuce from the grocery, you should rinse it before putting it on your bread.

Do you rinse lettuce before putting it on a sandwich?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 16 76.2%
  • No.

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I do not put lettuce on sandwiches.

    Votes: 3 14.3%

  • Total voters
    21
  • Poll closed .
  • #1
DaveC426913
Gold Member
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Just pretend I'm from another planet and am learning the basics on Earth.

If you buy head lettuce from the grocery, do you rinse it before putting it on your bread? What you do with it in other circumstances (such as making a whole salad) is another matter.
 
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  • #2
Yes. (10 Char)
 
  • #3
I was served a turkey sandwich once with a dead bee stuck to the lettuce.
 
  • #4
Why should it matter if I'm making a sandwich or a salad? The lettuce starts out just as dirty either way. Of course I wash it. Even if it was washed really well coming off the farm, which the dirt gathered down at the base of the leaves tells me doesn't happen, who knows who has touched it putting it out into the produce case or while it's been sitting there?
 
  • #5
There can always be dirt and insects inside lettuce, you really need to rinse it off before eating it.
 
  • #6
Definitly rinse. Especially with the people in the produce section of our local grocery store!
 
  • #7
Moonbear said:
Why should it matter if I'm making a sandwich or a salad? The lettuce starts out just as dirty either way. Of course I wash it. Even if it was washed really well coming off the farm, which the dirt gathered down at the base of the leaves tells me doesn't happen, who knows who has touched it putting it out into the produce case or while it's been sitting there?

The difference between a sandwich and a salad is that, for a salad, since you're tossing the whole thing anyway, you might as well rinse it and do all the other prep things. With a sandwich, for one leaf, it's hardly worth it. As for bugs, well, you never use the top layers anyway. The under layers, you can see if there are bugs & such.

But let's see what the audience says...
 
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  • #8
DaveC426913 said:
As for bugs, well, you never use the top layers anyway. The under layers, you can see if there are bugs & such.
I usually get Romaine or leaf lettuce, so use all the layers. Besides, it's the under layers where the bugs hang out while it's growing. The outside gets the bird poop. :biggrin:

When I make salad, usually it's just for me too, so one or two leaves does the job. But, the easiest is to wash the lettuce when I bring it home and then store it in my fridge already washed so I don't have to worry about it every time I use it. Nothing nastier than gritty dirt in a sandwich though. :yuck:
 
  • #9
I rinse lettuce before eating it ever since I found a dead ladybug in my salad. And no, I didn't eat it. :biggrin:
 
  • #10
I always take off two layers off the lettuce head.

I never rinse. I sometimes rinse fruits.

Nevermind, I never rinse fruits.
 
  • #11
If you do not rinse leaf vegetables, you deserve to eat whatever is attached.
 
  • #12
i think if "dirty" lettuce was any harm we would all be dead by now , i found a worm in my lettuce today and counted myself lucky , i put him in the compost where he will do some good work !
 
  • #13
dubmarine said:
i think if "dirty" lettuce was any harm we would all be dead by now , i found a worm in my lettuce today and counted myself lucky , i put him in the compost where he will do some good work !
I opened a can of Green Giant Niblets corn once and there was half a large caterpillar inside. Although I am sure it would have done me no harm to eat it, I dumped the whole thing in the trash and lost my appetite.

I also opened a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna, and there was a secton of "fur" in it. I don't know which species of tuna has fur, so again, I dumped it in the trash, but this time I vomited.

I bought a 2 liter bottle of Dr Pepper and there was a daddy long legs bottled in it.

I picked up a jar of Kraft Grapefruit sections and there was a sneaker keychain bottled inside.

I won't even go into choking on plastic bags inside Mexican food at restaurants. Nothing like taking a forkful of beans then pulling a long strip of plastic out of your throat.
 
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  • #14
I rinse. But I do it by myself - I've never invited over the people from the produce section of illwerral's grocery store.
 
  • #15
My mom rinses her lettuce by filling a bowl of lettuce with water and a teaspoon of salt. She says the salt helps with getting any bugs off, but I don't know if there's any truth to that. Afterwards, she stores the rinsed lettuce in the fridge in a bowl with a wet paper towel on top.
It's always good - I can vouch for that!

Evo said:
I also opened a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna, and there was a secton of "fur" in it. I don't know which species of tuna has fur, so again, I dumped it in the trash, but this time I vomited.
I would have expected feathers. Chicken of the Sea, y'know..
 
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  • #16
Math Is Hard said:
My mom rinses her lettuce by filling a bowl of lettuce with water and a teaspoon of salt. She says the salt helps with getting any bugs off, but I don't know if there's any truth to that. Afterwards, she stores the rinsed lettuce in the fridge in a bowl with a wet paper towel on top.
It's always good - I can vouch for that!
A teaspoon of salt doesn't seem to be a high enough concentration to do any damage. A teaspoon of chlorine on the other hand might be.


As far as the claim that it won't kill you that's true. The pesticides and other chemicals on fruits or tiny bits of dirt in your lettuce won't kill you, but they're not exactly beneficial. Swallowing a little pesticide here, some sodium benzoate there and over time it makes you sick. As far as the dirt on lettuce that would be a great environment for bacteria to grow in. Again, eating the amount that's found on a typical head of lettuce probably won't do much but you're better off washing it off anyway.
 
  • #17
When I was young, a family friend found a possible link between unwashed lettuce and meningitis - its deeply ingrained in me that lettuce must be washed thoroughly.
 
  • #18
Math Is Hard said:
My mom rinses her lettuce by filling a bowl of lettuce with water and a teaspoon of salt. She says the salt helps with getting any bugs off, but I don't know if there's any truth to that. Afterwards, she stores the rinsed lettuce in the fridge in a bowl with a wet paper towel on top.
Just plunging it into a bowl of water should do that. Just leave it in long enough so the bugs have time to float up and out. The teaspoon of salt is probably more beneficial to the lettuce (keep it from absorbing water) than it is for killing bugs.
 
  • #19
Gokul43201 said:
I rinse. But I do it by myself - I've never invited over the people from the produce section of illwerral's grocery store.
:rofl: :rofl:
 
  • #20
There could be bacteria on the lettuce, so wash it.

There was this medical detective documentary one time, where there was an outbreak of a food-born bacterium. When cross-checking all cases they found that all had in common that they visited a restaurant in recent days.

They found the source of contamination in parsley, which was produced in a country outside of the US that washed the parsley with water that was contaminated with bacteria.I once found a head from a grasshopper in between my lentils and bugs like to sit in vegetables, so I definitely wash everything.
 
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  • #21
Math Is Hard said:
I would have expected feathers. Chicken of the Sea, y'know..
Aha! The secret is out; you're really Jessica Simpson!

I wash lettuce and potatoes, but only polish apples or tomatoes or such with a towel or my hands.
 
  • #22
Danger said:
...but only polish apples or tomatoes or such with a towel or my hands.
I've never quite understood the purpose of that. If anything, you're more likely to make it dirtier by transferring bacteria from the towel to the fruit, but mostly it seems unlikely to do anything. I wash all produce.
 
  • #23
Evo said:
I won't even go into choking on plastic bags inside Mexican food at restaurants.
:bugeye: :bugeye:
What were you doing inside Mexican food*?? It must have been one of those biggie-sized Taco shells.

Some things you just have to read twice to understand them...


* other than choking, that is...
 
  • #24
Moonbear said:
I've never quite understood the purpose of that.
A lot of the apples here have an extremely thin coat of wax on them. Polishing them quite effectively wipes contaminants off of it. With tomatoes and such, it's just to get the cat hair off. :biggrin:
 
  • #25
If you get Argentinian GM-soybeans you don't need to be afraid of bugs, I don't think there is an animal alive in those fields. But if you eat them without washing, you won't do too well either :wink: probably the same with other crops that have been made resistant to pesticides.
 
  • #26
Moonbear said:
I've never quite understood the purpose of that. If anything, you're more likely to make it dirtier by transferring bacteria from the towel to the fruit, but mostly it seems unlikely to do anything. I wash all produce.

When you wash your produce, do you use a solution to kill bacteria and such or do you use water to try to lift off the contaminants? There used to be a comercial solution for washing produce. It was sold around the produce section but I never tried it...can't think of the name.
 
  • #27
Evo said:
I opened a can of Green Giant Niblets corn once and there was half a large caterpillar inside. Although I am sure it would have done me no harm to eat it, I dumped the whole thing in the trash and lost my appetite.

I also opened a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna, and there was a secton of "fur" in it. I don't know which species of tuna has fur, so again, I dumped it in the trash, but this time I vomited.

I bought a 2 liter bottle of Dr Pepper and there was a daddy long legs bottled in it.

I picked up a jar of Kraft Grapefruit sections and there was a sneaker keychain bottled inside.

I won't even go into choking on plastic bags inside Mexican food at restaurants. Nothing like taking a forkful of beans then pulling a long strip of plastic out of your throat.

You could have made some money off all that stuff! Now, you will just have to put it in your book(that you will write someday.)
Can't wait to read it!
 
  • #28
Evo said:
I opened a can of Green Giant Niblets corn once and there was half a large caterpillar inside. Although I am sure it would have done me no harm to eat it, I dumped the whole thing in the trash and lost my appetite.

I also opened a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna, and there was a secton of "fur" in it. I don't know which species of tuna has fur, so again, I dumped it in the trash, but this time I vomited.

I bought a 2 liter bottle of Dr Pepper and there was a daddy long legs bottled in it.

I picked up a jar of Kraft Grapefruit sections and there was a sneaker keychain bottled inside.

I won't even go into choking on plastic bags inside Mexican food at restaurants. Nothing like taking a forkful of beans then pulling a long strip of plastic out of your throat.

This is horrible...now I'm going to have to thoroughly check everything I eat and drink. I always glance, but now I'm going to be a full-blown inspector. If I ever found a spider in my drink then I would probably die.
 
  • #29
larkspur said:
When you wash your produce, do you use a solution to kill bacteria and such or do you use water to try to lift off the contaminants? There used to be a comercial solution for washing produce. It was sold around the produce section but I never tried it...can't think of the name.
I just use plenty of running water. That actually will get a lot of bacteria off too, a little bit of bacteria are everywhere anyway, so I don't go nuts about it. Mostly, I don't like gritty food, so want dirt off it, and no hidden bug surprises. I know some people will use a bit of bleach in the water they wash produce with, but somehow, bleach sounds more distasteful on my food than the bacteria it might kill. :rolleyes:
 
  • #30
Danger said:
A lot of the apples here have an extremely thin coat of wax on them. Polishing them quite effectively wipes contaminants off of it. With tomatoes and such, it's just to get the cat hair off. :biggrin:
I never thought rubbing the apples got any of that wax off when they had it on them. Even washing doesn't seem to take it off unless you use fairly warm water to melt it off, but then that seems to make the fruit soft. I know the wax helps preserve it longer in the store, but I prefer not having that on them at all.

Ooh, but now it's summer time, so I have to start hunting for the farmer's stands rather than relying on the supermarket. :biggrin:
 
  • #31
Moonbear said:
Ooh, but now it's summer time, so I have to start hunting for the farmer's stands rather than relying on the supermarket. :biggrin:

There is a "Pick Your Own" fruit and berry patch close to me. They are not organic growers but at least I know the person that picked the fruit did not have hepatitis.
I think this weekend starts blueberry season! Think I'll go pick some.
 

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