Watermelon is the quintessential summer season fruit: candy, juicy, and brightly coloured sufficient to immediately elevate any picnic, barbecue, or cocktail social gathering. However to guard you, your loved ones, and your visitors from bringing residence a not-so-fun remembrance of your out of doors occasion—a nasty case of meals poisoning—you’ll wish to be sure to’re taking an important step earlier than carving in.
“Washing melons earlier than slicing is vital,” Darin Detwiler, PhD, a meals security professional and affiliate educating professor at Northeastern College’s School of Skilled Research, tells SELF. Whereas the concept may by no means have crossed your thoughts earlier than—in spite of everything, you don’t eat the rind— this recommendation truly is sensible when you concentrate on it.
Not like berries, watermelons develop on the bottom, exposing them to all types of contaminants—mud, soil, soiled water, animal waste, improperly composted manure, and extra. As soon as harvested, they will decide up much more throughout storage, dealing with, and transport as they make their means from discipline to retailer, after which from retailer to kitchen counter. By the point you buy your melon, it’s in all probability been touched by dozens of various folks, a few of whom could have petted animals, picked their noses, used the toilet, or in any other case made contact with germs beforehand with out washing their arms first. “You do not know the place their arms have been,” Dr. Detwiler says.
Then, once you take a knife to your melon, the blade can switch all that nasty stuff instantly from the outside to the inside, “dragging micro organism straight into your meals,” Dr. Detwiler says. From salmonella to Listeria to E. coli, these bugs have the potential to make you significantly sick. (The truth is, contaminated watermelon has been implicated in a bunch of salmonella outbreaks within the US during the last decade or so.) In the event you do turn out to be unwell, you can probably count on traditional meals poisoning signs like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which generally pop up inside a couple of hours to a number of days and final across the similar period of time. Spending a wonderful summer season day camped out by the bathroom is an expertise certain to make you want you’d by no means taken a chew within the first place.
How watermelon is often ready additionally places it at a sanitary drawback, based on Dr. Detwiler. Not like, say, corn on the cob, watermelon is often eaten uncooked, so potential pathogens aren’t killed off by cooking. For that motive, “the one efficient measure” that you could possibly take to scale back the meals poisoning danger is washing your melon earlier than slicing into it, Dr. Detwiler says. This removes potential exterior contaminants earlier than they’ve an opportunity to succeed in the inside.
Not solely is washing efficient, it additionally doesn’t should be difficult. First, rinse your melon in cool, operating water (holding it beneath the kitchen faucet, say). Subsequent, scrub it throughout with a clear brush. Then, pat it dry with a paper towel to scale back floor moisture, since micro organism like moist surfaces. “Don’t use cleaning soap or bleach, simply water and friction,” Dr. Detwiler says. Lastly, ensure that your knife and slicing floor are clear as effectively; in any other case, you run into the extra danger of transferring micro organism from the knife or board to the watermelon flesh.
