Fresh Produce Spraying at Health Food Stores (consumer alert)

The surprising observe of chemical spraying of recent produce together with organics at a mega healthfood retailer chain. The poisonous chemical bottle is conveniently tucked away from prying client eyes!

Have you ever seen recent produce at healthfood shops being misted or sprayed whilst you have been purchasing?

If you’re like me, you’ll have assumed it was simply water to maintain the produce moist to protect freshness.

As it seems, this assumption appears to be very, very unsuitable!

An alert client just lately posted a set of pictures to social media that present a really poisonous product getting used to spray produce at Sprouts Farmers Market shops.

If you haven’t heard of it earlier than, Sprouts is a big healthfood retailer chain headquartered in Arizona. The firm has 35,000 workers and operates almost 400 shops throughout 23 states.

Naturally, I used to be fairly shocked by these pictures and determined to analyze the scenario for myself. I’ve a Sprouts inside a couple of miles of my dwelling.

I usually don’t store there, however I finished in anyway to have a look to both verify or disprove what the social media publish was claiming.

What I discovered 100% confirms what I noticed on social media. 🤯

On the brilliant aspect, it offered but another excuse why shopping for produce from independently owned and operated healthfood shops, native farms, and farmers markets is value each second of inconvenience and barely extra further value!

Toxic Antimicrobial on Your Produce

What precisely is the spray bottle hidden above the natural produce at the Sprouts retailer?

It’s referred to as Sterilox. Here’s a closeup image I took which matches the viral social media publish.

What precisely is on this stuff?

In a nutshell, Sterilox is a disinfectant authorized by the FDA in 2007 to be used as a food-safe sanitizer for use when re-hydrating or rinsing recent produce, together with leafy inexperienced greens. (1)

The Sterilox System makes use of salt, water, and electrical energy to generate a food-safe sanitizer on web site and on demand and is presently utilized in hundreds of U.S. retail supermarkets, the corporate mentioned. (2)

While solely salt, water, and electrical energy could have been utilized in 2007, it seems that Sterilox is sort of a bit totally different now!

Chemstar, the corporate that manufactures Sterilox has on their web site a bottle of the stuff with natural produce within the background. (3)

At the Sprouts the place I took the {photograph}, the Sterilox was proper above the natural produce part.

And sure, these items is allowed to be sprayed on organics! (4)

Here’s the safety data sheet on Sterilox Produce Maxx. (5)

Doesn’t look very secure or “organic”, does it?

Hypochlorous acid and 6000 ppm of Free Available Chlorine (FAC)?

For comparability, solely 4 ppm chlorine is taken into account secure in consuming water, and it isn’t even secure to drink that! (6)

Consider that this antimicrobial being sprayed in your recent produce incorporates 1500X that quantity of chlorine. Granted, the product is diluted with faucet water earlier than spraying, however the quantity of chlorine that is still on the produce itself will likely be astronomical and never in any means secure!

Fresh Cut Fruit

If you thought that spraying an antimicrobial on recent produce was regarding, right here’s the actually dangerous information.

Sterilox (or Aqualox or Aquatine… the identical factor, simply totally different names) is being sprayed immediately on the recent minimize vegetables and fruit offered in containers too.

Believe it or not, eating places usually use it to crisp up the veggies on salad bars as properly.

Have you ever opened a container of fresh-cut natural produce from the health food retailer and washed it earlier than eating?

I do know I haven’t.

This is from the corporate’s web site on utilizing Sterilox with recent minimize fruit. (7, 8)

To sustain with time-starved shoppers, the recent minimize vegetables and fruit has turn into a high worth signature class for the produce division.  Rinsing recent minimize vegetables and fruit in Produce Maxx [Sterilox] reduces spoilage-causing personal health micro organism to reinforce shelf lifetime of the product whereas additionally defending towards cross contamination.

Significant client and retailer financial advantages embody:

• Protects towards cross contamination when rinsing minimize fruit in the identical course of water
• Reduces spoilage-causing personal health micro organism and product breakdown for higher high quality
• Enables retailers to increase code date by way of purge discount
• All these advantages with no organoleptic influence to the product

Here’s a screengrab in case the corporate disappears the web page.

So, whilst you might imagine that, “no big deal, I can wash off the Sterilox sprayed on the fresh produce before eating”, it’s a complete totally different difficulty with the fresh-cut produce, wouldn’t you agree?

Convenience appears to all the time have a value, doesn’t it?

Is it simply me, or does it seem to be we’re being poisoned at each flip even when we attempt to keep away from the chemical compounds?

Cut up your personal natural fruit and veggies my pals!

What About Other Healthfood Stores?

While I’ve not discovered a bottle of Sterilox at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, these corporations are definitely making use of the identical or the same product to their produce as properly. (9)

My recommendation can be to buy solely at a regionally owned health food retailer the place you possibly can converse to the supervisor immediately and make sure that the produce is just not being sprayed with an antimicrobial product.

Other nice choices are to get your produce from an actual farmer’s market (not a faux one like Sprouts) or from native farms immediately.

Big company chains minimize corners and your health is just not of major concern. Profits are.

References

(1, 2) FDA Approves Sterilox Food Safety Solution for Food Contact

(3, 8) Sterilox Produce Maxx (scroll down for recent minimize fruit)

(4, 9) BUYER BEWARE: Things May Not Be What They Seem within the Produce Department!

(5) Sterilox Produce Maxx Safety Data Sheet

(6) Water Disinfection with Chlorine and Chloramine

(7) Chemstar Sterilox Fresh Solutions