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What Type of Kitchen Cutting Boards Do You Use?
I'm the carver in our house. I don't mean wood carvings (be nice if I could) but turkey,
roasts, leg of lamb, etc. That kind of carving...and because I'm conscientious about
good health and food contamination...I threw out my wood carving boards years ago
and replaced them with plastic ones.
I did so because I could easily wash hard plastic carving boards or put them into my
dish washer machine for healthier and easy cleaning (I thought) while even after
cleaning my wood carving boards, the cuts and nicks and cracks appeared to me to be
good places where bacteria found a friendly home and proliferated putting myself and
my family at a health risk that seemed unnecessary.
Hard seamless plastic was safe. It was being used everywhere and even endorsed by
the health department! What could be better?
Besides...what could live in dead plastic? Well...plenty it seems!
The Truth About Wood Cutting Boards
It happens that a few years ago (I recently found out) researchers were surprised to find
that wooden cutting boards did not sustain the growth of bacteria, but their plastic
counterparts did.
Just the opposite of what everyone believed!
Their research was partially stimulated by the ruling of numerous health department
mandates to the effect that commercial establishments must use plastic cutting boards
on the assumption that wood (with all its cracks, crevices, and knife cuts) would harbor
micro-organisms, and that seamless hard plastic cutting boards (with only superficial
grooving from knives) could be cleaned more easily and effectively.
In the course of their study, the researchers found that micro-organisms simply didn't
survive on wooden cutting boards that were cleaned after use (looks like butcher blocks
are here to stay!). And plastic cutting boards...even after similar cleaning...did in fact
harbor bacteria with regularity. Shocked me!
As you can well imagine, all my plastic cutting boards are now gone and I am
contentedly back to the safety of wood.
The researchers (to the best of my knowledge) have not checked on any other
household items, nor made any comment about mixing spoons for cooking, but I sense
the smart thing to do is make a switch here too, so I got rid of my plastic spoons and
switched to wooden ones.
And while we are in the midst of making changes, how about switching the plastic trays
on highchairs to wooden trays for a little added protection for the future rulers of our
country?
It's not that I'm getting paranoid, but when it comes to good health, why not take the
simple precautions that are available to you for self-protection and the protection of your
family? Why mess with risks that are easily eliminated?
What was it that someone said about an ounce of prevention?
Yours in good health,
Ira Marxe
CEO, Good Health Supplement
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