I first heard that something was going on on Tuesday at work when the Metro had a suitably ridiculous sounding headline about salad killing. I was slightly concerned when I read the article and discovered that there was a risk of catching E.coli if you'd eaten any Spanish salad...with particular emphasis on cucumbers. Now I happen to love cucumbers and had in fact eaten about 3/4 of a Spanish cucumber on Monday. As you do.
I told my manager at work this and he seemed to think this was really weird. I don't agree. Now if I'd eaten an entire lettuce in one day..that would be more worrying as that's a lot of lettuce. But when you're munching cucumber sticks as your lunch because your neice has stolen all of the more exciting food from your plate, and theres yummy humous, it's very easy to get through a lot of cucumber.
Anyway, I told my boss this and he said 'Oh you'll be fine as long as you washed it'. Now I'm entirely un-germ-phobic so don't really think about washing my fruit and veg that much, but I'm pretty sure that just water alone would not get rid of E.coli. Surely some sort of Dettol or peeling the fruit would be more effective?
I had this discussion with some of my colleagues at work today and we all slightly shamefully admitted that we never wash our fruit and vegetables. Even though I think, when picking out the 'best' vegetables at the supermarket 'I wonder how many other people have touched this (insert vegetable name)' I still rarely wash my fruit and vegetables before eating them.
I grew up with the teaching that 'germs are good for you' and I do seriously believe that because I ate a bit of soil here and there when I was little, and definitely enjoyed the odd lick of a pebble and taste of sand, that I'm nice and healthy now because I'm immune to lots of germs.
So hopefully I will survive my excessive unwashed cucumber eating...we'll see how it goes!
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