We all know dishwashers are a godsend for cleaning pots and pans with ease, but now Tiktok says we should add produce to that list: A video has gone viral of a mom putting in the fruits and veggies she just bought Wash them in the dishwasher with vinegar. Her daughter, who was filming, asked if this was normal, to which her mom responded: “It’s normal for everyone, trust me.”
The comments section proved her wrong. While some users had heard about her hack, many others expressed some very relevant confusion. But are we missing out? Should we wash products in the dishwasher? This is what one expert says.
Is it safe to wash produce in a dishwasher?
“It’s probably not unsafe to put produce in the dishwasher, but I highly doubt it’s worth it,” said Jennifer C. Acuff, Ph.D., assistant professor of food safety and microbiology at the University of Arkansas for Agriculture.
Now, she says, it’s absolutely important to wash produce before eating it. Fruits and vegetables grow in open environments, and pathogens from wildlife and livestock can spread through wind, soil and other means. This means the fruits and vegetables you bring home from the store or farm stand may not only still be dirty, but they may also be contaminated with foodborne pathogens, such as salmonella or pathogenic E. coli, This can cause illness.
“Wash produce to remove dirt and associated pathogens if present,” explains Dr. Acuff.
While dishwashers are powerful cleaners, there’s a problem with using them to clean fruits and vegetables: “One of the reasons dishwashers are so good at cleaning and sanitizing dishes is the high pressure and heat,” she explains. But those same features—heat and high pressure—essentially cook the product while it’s cleaning, which is probably not a side effect most people are willing to sacrifice for convenience.
That said, some dishwashers have a cold rinse cycle that doesn’t use high temperatures. There are even some select (read: expensive) dishwashers that have a “Production” setting. These typically run a shorter cycle (15 minutes or so) and use only cold water. In this case, it might be perfectly fine to run your fruits and vegetables through a machine, but do you really need to?
While this might save you a little time, detergent residue and even bacteria inside the machine could be transferred to your fruits and vegetables, according to the Washington Post. Or the pathogens Dr. Akaf mentioned can be transferred from one produce to another. If you don’t use a high temperature setting, you won’t get the sanitizing effect it provides.
Adding vinegar may not do much at all. A 2006 study in the Journal of Food Protection found that rinsing fruits and vegetables with white vinegar was no more effective at removing bacteria than rinsing them with tap water. In fact, the USDA itself explicitly states that tap water is all that is needed to clean produce.
“You cannot ‘sterilize’ produce at home other than further processing through cooking or canning, but this defeats many consumers’ goals of consuming raw produce,” Dr. Acuff said.
So it turns out that the most effective way to remove dirt, debris, and bacteria from fruits and vegetables is actually the simplest: a traditional rinse and scrub with basic tap water, then dry with paper towels.
Rachael Schultz is an experienced health, fitness, and outdoor writer with bylines in PS, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health, Shape, Forbes, Equinox’s Furnished, and Insider Reviews. She’s fascinated by why our bodies and brains work the way they do and how science can optimize both (without losing your mind).
