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40 Top Paleo Recipes - Quick and Easy Paleo Diet Recipes

Why you must wash your pre-washed salad

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If you buy a pre-washed ready to eat bag of salad leaves, do you tip straight out onto a plate – or do you thoroughly wash it first? The whole idea of bagged salad mixes is convenience, so it’s no surprise most people don’t wash.

40 Top Paleo Recipes - Quick and Easy Paleo Diet Recipes

But how do they wash the salad before they bag it? Well it turns out diluted chlorine is commonly used. The chlorine is used to kill any harmful bacteria to ensure the lettuce is safe for our consumption. Seemingly even organic produce is allowed to use a weak chlorine solution for this purpose. Whilst there is supposed to be no trace of the chlorine 24 hours after treatment, do you trust your salad to be chemical free?

With outbreaks of e-coli and salmonella, it’s not surprising the salad growers are keen to sanitise their product. With salad available all year round the pressure is on to produce a cheap product – often meaning growers don’t provide sanitary conditions for their workers – hence the contamination risk. Unfortunately sanitising salad doesn’t remove the risk of contamination, it just makes it less likely.

So what’s the answer? If pre-washed salad could still be contaminated and could contain traces of chlorine is it worth paying the price premium?

Wash your own

A far better option is to spend a fraction of the cost buying fresh, unpackaged greens. Get rid of any wilted, torn or bruised leaves and let them sit in a sink full of ice cold water for 20 minutes. Use a salad spinner to get rid of the water and roll in paper towels to get the rest of the water out. If you store in plastic bags with paper towels to absorb any remaining water, they should remain fresh for over a week in the fridge.

How to you wash yours?

Why You Need To Stop Buying Ground Beef minced mince-min

Why You Need To Stop Buying Ground Beef

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So many recipes call for ground beef (or mince meat, depending on where you’re from). It’s on sale in every supermarket and butcher, but what exactly is in it – and should you buy it?

What Actually Is It?

The point of mince meat, is to use all of the bits of the animal that can’t be used elsewhere. Commercially produced ground beef will typically contain parts from hundreds of different carcasses. This product is also a good way to make use of old dairy cattle, and other animals that wouldn't be used for the popular cuts of meat. A pack of ground beef could contain all sorts of different parts of thousands of cows, yet the ingredients will still say “100% beef”.

Why You Need To Stop Buying Ground Beef minced mince-min

The E. Coli Risk

The other significant problem with ground beef, is the health risk.

E. Coli can get into the food chain when the dirty exterior (and particularly any faeces) come into contact with the inside of the meat – the bits that go into the mince.

In a small scale operation cross contamination like this is unlikely, but in a large processing plant, where workers are under pressure to turn around as many animals as possible, the risk is far higher. The way ground meat is made, means any bacteria that has accumulate on the surface of the meat will rapidly permeate through the whole product.

Where so many animal parts are present in one product, the risk is obviously greatly increased. To mitigate the risk, the meat is often vacuumed, washed with hot water and lactic acid, but these measures do not guarantee safety.

What’s The Solution?

For me, the solution is making my own ground beef. I have bought an old fashioned, hand operated mincer, that clamps to my kitchen counter. This means I can buy my own grass-fed organic beef, from my trusted butcher. This way I know exactly what my minced meat contains, I can make it fresh when I need it, and won’t need to store it, which will help the bacteria risk.

Do you make your own ground meat? I’d love to hear your thoughts on minced meat, and whether you’re happy to buy it, or make your own.