Do You Need to Disinfect Your Groceries or Delivery Items?
Even before coronavirus, studies like this one this one found that supermarkets are like petri dishes of pathogenic germs.
Shopping cart handles have 361 times more bacteria than your toilet handle. The freezer doors had even more than this!
It is always advisable to take precautions like wiping down carts and sanitizing your hands immediately after shopping.
With a deadly pandemic going on though, the need for precaution is even greater. You don’t want the COVID-19 virus sneaking into your home through grocery items. Yes, it takes a lot of cleaner, planning, and time, but disinfecting your groceries and delivery items is a small step you can take to prevent getting sick.
Contents
Whether or not you should disinfect your groceries and delivery items is a controversial issue. Many experts and the CDC reassuringly say that COVID-19 primarily spreads from person to person through respiratory droplets and there is currently no evidence of it spreading from food.
However, the CDC also warns,
“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object, like a packaging container, that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes.”
Despite this, the FDA still does not recommend disinfecting grocery packaging. Instead, they say you should simply “wash your hands after handling food packaging, after removing food from the packaging, before you prepare food for eating and before you eat.”
How would this work in practice? It would mean you would have to immediately wash your hands after putting away groceries. You want a snack? Don’t eat it from the package. Instead, get the snack and put it in bowl. Then wash your hands before eating.
Even though it isn’t recommended by the FDA or CDC, I still disinfect my groceries: It’s a lot easier for me to disinfect everything when I get it than wash my hands each time I touch food packaging.
There’s also the logistics: What if I put a food package on the counter? Do I need to disinfect the counter now too? Suddenly, I’m spending the entire day cleaning and washing my hands!
I’ve also got two small kids who are constantly grabbing at snacks. They definitely can’t be trusted to not touch their face after touching a bag of food.
These instructions are for disinfecting items from the supermarket. If you need to disinfect delivery items, just skip steps 3 and 4.
The first step to disinfecting groceries is understanding the risk period. The most commonly-cited study which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that COVID-19 survives for these periods:
This is important to know because, in some cases, you can put your groceries or deliveries in “quarantine” somewhere they won’t be disturbed for at least three days. Then you don’t have to bother disinfecting them at all.
Obviously this isn’t possible with products like meat, dairy, or frozen goods. However, quarantining some of your shopping items means you have less to disinfect.
In normal times, you might prefer to use natural disinfectants like vinegar or essential oils. Unfortunately, these are not effective against coronavirus. If you want to disinfect your groceries or deliveries, you must use one which is actually proven to kill SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19).
The good news is that this study found coronaviruses can be inactivated within 1 minute with:
Note that the disinfectant benzalkonium chloride (the active ingredient in many Lysol products) was found to be less effective at killing the COVID-19 virus.
To see which disinfectants work on coronavirus, see the EPA’s list of approved disinfectants.
Because you are more likely to get COVID-19 from people and not food items, the best thing you can do is avoid going to places like the supermarket. Tap into your food stockpile and stay at home!
Even if it means eating up all that food in your pantry which you don’t like, stay home! If possible, get grocery delivery instead of going out.
If you have to go grocery shopping, follow these tips:
Important: Check with the store management before using bleach wipes on shopping carts! Some of the disinfectants they use are not compatible with bleach.
Organize your groceries as you bag them up. This will make it easier to disinfect the groceries later on. Make sure these items get bagged separately:
I’ve heard of some people spraying each item with disinfectant before they put it in their cart. I’d advise against this.
If you disinfect as you shop, you will have to spend a lot longer in the store – which means your contact time with people is greater. Plus, the cashier will have to touch the items at checkout, so you’d have to disinfect again anyway.
Don’t try to disinfect your groceries before loading them into your vehicle. This will take too much time and it will be difficult to do it effectively. You also won’t be able to clean produce. It’s better to wait until you get home.
Follow these protocols:
Removing your face mask: Remember to only remove a face mask with clean hands! You should sanitize your hands after removing the mask. Put the mask in a breathable bag. Do not touch for at least 3 days.
When you unload your groceries, they will go in a designated “dirty” area. As you sanitize them, you will move them to the “clean” space.
Tips:
Pour a bit of disinfectant into a plastic bowl. Dip a cloth into it and rub it on the grocery items. Make sure you get all sides of the item. When done, put in the “clean” box you set up before.
I personally don’t like spray disinfectants. Spray bottles release a shower of cleaning solution droplets to get into the air, which could be unsafe to breathe in. That’s why it’s better to dip a cloth into disinfectant and use this to rub down your groceries.
Ideally, you should wear gloves while disinfecting items; disinfectants are harsh on skin and can cause your skin to crack.
Simply rub disinfectant on all sides of the packaging. For disinfectants to work, they need to remain in contact with the packaging for about a minute (it varies by disinfectant; see the FDA’s list).
This doesn’t mean you need to drench the food item though. Just be sure the packaging is slightly wet. Do not dry the packaging. Just put the food item into the clean area and let it air dry before putting it away.
Note that bleach is corrosive. If using for disinfecting canned goods, you’ll need to rinse them in water after you are done.
Coronaviruses can survive for long periods in the freezer. You’ll need to disinfect everything which is going into your freezer. Do frozen items before non-perishables (but after meat and dairy) so you can put them away before they start to melt. Remember to wash your hands before putting away the disinfected items.
Many products (like cereal, some cookies, etc.), are wrapped in plastic and then put in a cardboard box. Instead of disinfecting the cardboard, carefully open the box and dump the plastic package in the “clean” area. Leave the cardboard packaging in the dirty area for disposal.
You can also remove the packaging from items like bread or pasta. To do this, you’ll need to carefully open the packaging and dump the contents into a clean container. Then you set the packaging aside in the dirty area for disposal. Make sure you plan it out ahead of time so you have the containers waiting for you.
You can’t rub disinfectant on paper bags; it will leach into the contents and also ruin the packaging. For these items, you have two options:
Don’t try to spray produce with disinfectant. Instead, put all produce in a clean box. You’ll carry this box to the sink for washing after you are done disinfecting the other grocery items. More on this later.
Since you should always should be cautious when handling meat, you probably don’t need to disinfect it. Just wash your hands as normal after handling the meat. If you are still concerned, you can remove raw meat from its packaging and transfer it to a clean container to go in your fridge.
You don’t have to throw away plastic shopping bags because of coronavirus. Nor do you have to stop using reusable shopping bags. Instead, put the shopping bags in your quarantine spot for 72 hours. Cloth shopping bags can be washed to disinfect.
Now you can remove your gloves. If you didn’t wear gloves, either wash your hands at this point or use hand sanitizer. Then you can take the clean grocery items inside and put them away.
It’s very difficult to disinfect your groceries without contact contamination occurring at some point. While it’s unlikely that you’ll get sick from this little bit of contamination, you can play it safe by disinfecting anything which you may have touched.
This includes:
Disinfecting produce against COVID-19 is much trickier than disinfecting packaged items. Luckily, the chances of getting sick from contaminated produce appears to be very low. Many experts recommend simply washing produce before you eat it, as you normally would.
If you do choose to disinfect your fruits and vegetables, here’s how it can be done safely.
Keep in mind:
Coronavirus doesn’t do well on food. Even if some trace amounts of coronavirus were on your delivery food, it’s a respiratory disease so it’s very unlikely you’d get it by eating contaminated food. However, the food packaging can be problematic.
To protect against COVID-19 when getting takeout or food delivery:
https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/healthy-home/3274/cfs-healthy-home/tips-for-a-healthy-home/3474/the-truth-about-produce-wash#
https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/nutrition/fruit-wash-does-it-work-better-than-plain-water/
https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-04-08/coronavirus-food-safety-tip-dont-wash-your-produce-with-soap
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14540742
https://www.bestfoodfacts.org/fruit-vinegar/
https://globalnews.ca/news/6703882/coronavirus-covid-19-cleaning-vinegar/
Check out our Ebook bundle. Nine titles packed full of premium prepper information.
Instant download – print off for use when the grid goes down.
EXCELLENT
This is excellent. I especially liked the part about not throwing away the plastic bags which I have bending.
I should have probably also added not to throw away the plastic gloves either. Mine go into “quarantine” for 3 days and then I reuse them. 🙂 Just because there’s a disaster happening, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be conscientious of plastic waste!
I think this is a great article, and very helpful. The most dangerous thing of all is remembering to do all this in the right order and not getting distracted from your purpose. I am a senior now, (71 yrs), and i have to be very careful as i was diagnosed with moderate COPD a while back, so Covid-19 could well be fatal for me. When I was a kid I grew up in India, and I remember my mom used to use Potassium Permanganate to disinfect produce that you consume without cooking, (lettuce, bell peppers, cucumbers etc)… its very powerful, just an eighth of a teaspoon in a gallon of water will do it, it should look pink/purple when the dilution is correct. You submerge everything for ten minutes then rinse thoroughly in clean running water and you are done, no aftertaste, incredibly cheap, (you can buy it on amazon for a few bucks)… It seems like it has been forgotten in this age of pre-packaged products!
I know a lot of people have put lists next to their door with steps/protocols to follow — for disinfecting groceries and for simply entering the home, like what order to remove gloves, shoes, hand sanitizer, etc. This definitely makes it easier to do everything properly!
Good note about the potassium permanganate! A lot of people haven’t heard of it. We did a post on it a while back – https://www.primalsurvivor.net/potassium-permanganate-survival/
Stay safe!
This copyrighted material may not be republished without express permission. The information presented here is for general educational purposes only.
Disclaimer: This website and the material covered is for informational purposes only. We take no responsibility for what you do with this knowledge. By taking and/or using any informational resources from this website you agree that you will use this information in a safe and legal manner, consistent with all applicable laws, safety rules, and good common sense. Full disclaimers here.
MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that this website has an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the persons or businesses mentioned in or linked to from this page and may receive commissions from purchases you make on subsequent web sites. You should not rely solely on information contained on this website to evaluate the product or service being endorsed. Always exercise due diligence before purchasing any product or service. This website contains advertisements.
Do You Need to Disinfect Your Groceries or Delivery Items?
Research & References of Do You Need to Disinfect Your Groceries or Delivery Items?|A&C Accounting And Tax Services
Source
0 Comments