CUTTING BOARDS

I hope that some of the people reading this article find it disturbing that plastic cutting boards are now color coded. Animal foods are now so contaminated, that beef, fish, and chicken all require their own surfaces for preparation. It is my very strong feeling that if something is not safe to touch, we should not be eating it. The very recent changes in handling and cooking recommendations for animal products are not due to advanced scientific discoveries about the nature of viral and bacterial contamination. They are due to an unimaginably high level of contamination due to equally unimaginable methods of “animal production”. Do you think chicken is better? Maybe fish? Keep thinking it as you have to sterilize everything that these foods come into contact with.

The topic of this article, however, is cutting boards. It has always been thought, and it has also been my belief, that with current conditions non-porous plastic cutting boards were safer than wood for cutting meats. However, there is research which supports that this is not true. Plastic cutting boards, once used, tend to harbor and allow the proliferation of pathogenic (disease producing) bacteria. This is not the case for either new or used wooden cutting boards (proper cleaning with soap and hot water is still needed). The research was done for the U.S.D.A. by University of California at Davis professor Dean O. Cliver.

Not only are plastic cutting boards less safe than wooden ones, they are also commonly impregnated with toxic pesticides. Marketed as anti-bacterial, they contain chemicals which kill odor causing bacteria or protect the surface of the plastic itself, but have no effect upon disease causing bacteria such as salmonella or E. coli. The EPA requires manufacturers to make this clear on the packaging (see the EPA page on Consumer Products Treated with Pesticides), but such qualifying statements are neither promoted by the manufacturers nor recognized by the public. With over 80 million food-born illnesses occurring annually in the United States (most of these occur at home, and I can assure you they are not from spinach), it might be a good idea to read the packages more closely.