Vinegar is a good choice for washing fruits and vegetables. Or lemon juice, but the cost of that is prohibitive. I would not use peroxide, as someone posted here. It can be carcinogenic to mucus membranes at higher concentrations. (It is considered safe to occasionally use hydrogen peroxide, 5%, further diluted by HALF, as mouth rinse or wound cleanser.) I don’t think bleach is used commercially, to wash fruits and vegetables, but I may be wrong. I asked the owners of our state’s largest peach orchard, if they wash their fruit, and they said they did not. So I wash their fruit in vinegar before canning it, even though processing should kill all germs. I’m less concerned with contamination from birds, etc., than I am from people. As a nurse, I can tell you that most people do not wash their hands properly, and even if they do, they then turn off the faucet, with whatever was on their and everyone else’s hands in the first place, still on the faucet, now back on their “clean” hands. And I always wipe down the handles of the shopping cart, as well as the seat, when I shop. And knowing that most grocery stockers are guys, and who knows where THEIR unwashed hands have been, just about anything in the store should be wiped down or at least rinsed. I am VERY conscientious about washing my hands, and after being around sick people over a quarter of a century, I have never gotten the flu, and I never get a flu shot. And I rarely get a cold.
” I would not use peroxide, as someone posted here. It can be carcinogenic to mucus membranes at higher concentrations.”
Just curious why water with oxygen would be carcinogenic. (H2O2). Yes, most anything could be harmful in high concentrations. Don’t snort Wasabe powder, for example.
“And knowing that most grocery stockers are guys, and who knows where THEIR unwashed hands have been, just about anything in the store should be wiped down or at least rinsed.”
That is hilarious, are you actually suggesting that if they were girls you would know where their unwashed hands have been?
I would not be worried about using hydrogen peroxide to wash fruits and vegetables; to protect against certain organisms (notably cryptosporidia), that may be the only choice. Your body contains hydrogen peroxide within cellular vesicles that exist to kill microorganisms. Furthermore, since H2O2 is completely soluble in water, it would rinse off readily, more readily than any soap.
I have been to microbiology conferences and seen researchers discuss the practice of washing fresh produce with a bleach solution (0.1%, IIRC) to remove surface contaminants and act as a disinfectant. I know that this is a requirement in Mexico for farmers that want to sell their produce in the US. One researcher had gone to Mexico to teach the farmers proper washing techniques and the importance of making sure the wash water contains sufficient bleach to be anti-bacterial.
Chicken is also washed in bleach prior to sale; Russia used this practice as an excuse to ban poultry imports from the US a few years ago (although the real reason was political; they did not care about bleach-washed chicken before the political issue popped up). (And we’ve been selling chicken to Russia for decades, since long before the USSR fell.)
The reason bleach is used to sanitize food is that bleach is incredibly unstable. Once it is diluted sufficiently with water, it degrades into ordinary salt within a short period of time. The bleach you use around the house degrades, too, but not as quickly. For disinfection purposes in a research laboratory, however, household bleach must be used within 6 months of receipt. I will note that there are many restrictions on what research laboratories may pour down the drain, but diluted bleach may be discarded freely in that manner due to its instable nature.
A last note is that when you process foods at home, it is not necessary to surface sanitize them prior to processing. If you are canning fruits, the bacteria that can cause problems will be destroyed in the boiling process, and the bacteria that are not destroyed (spore formers like Clostridia species) will not be able to grow due to the acid in the fruit. If you are processing non-acidic foods, such as many vegetables or meats, you want to pressure cook them but you still may not be able to reach a temperature sufficient to kill the spore formers. Thus, you should always bring those foods to a boil for ten minutes prior to consumption, as that will kill the toxins produced by those organisms and make those foods safe to consume.