How to identify fresh, clean vegetables and fruits during Tet

Tet is an occasion for relatives to gather and celebrate with their families. In addition to the products commonly used during Tet such as cakes, jams, candies, and processed products, people should pay attention to adding fresh vegetables and fruits to balance the quality of their meals, enhance the body's digestive ability, and help maintain health after Tet.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Food Safety, to ensure safety, consumers should prioritize choosing vegetables and fruits that are in season. During the main season, most crops grow and develop normally, with few pests and diseases, leading to the use of pesticides, fertilizers and stimulants to increase productivity, thereby limiting the use of chemicals.

How to identify and choose safe vegetables and fruits

Vegetable shoots (sweet potato leaves, squash shoots...)

Do not buy bunches of vegetables with tips that are too long, due to overdosing on growth stimulants and not ensuring the quarantine period. If you buy them and do not use them immediately, the next day the tips will grow another 5-10 cm.

Vegetables (green cabbage, Chinese cabbage...)

When buying, you should break the stem in half. If you see water coming out of the stem, the cabbage has been fertilized with too much nitrogen, the quarantine period has not been ensured, and the nitrate content in the vegetable is still very high. If left for more than 12 hours, it will easily turn brown and black, so you should not buy it.

Spinach

Do not buy bunches of vegetables with larger stems than normal, crispy vegetables, dark green leaves, and the upper surface of the leaves looks shiny and smooth when viewed from the side, due to the use of a lot of nitrogen fertilizer or foliar fertilizer. When the water used to boil these vegetables cools, the water will turn dark green; when finished eating, if you pay attention, you will notice an astringent taste.

Squash (tops and leaves of pumpkin plant)

You should not buy bunches of vegetables with long tips, long distance between internodes (long tips), thick and short stems, little hair, light green squash tips, dark green leaves... due to too much nitrogen or foliar fertilizer and not enough quarantine time.

Celery

When you see the vegetable stems are large, the shoots are white, and the vegetables wilt quickly, you should not buy them because they have been used too much foliar fertilizer and there may be residual pesticides. If you leave them until the next day, the vegetables will wilt, the stems will dry up and wrinkle, and when cooked, the leaves will turn dark green.

Roots and fruits

Do not choose fruits that are too large, but choose fruits that are medium or slightly small in size. Do not choose fruits with tight skin and cracks along the body, or fruits with shiny green skin. Especially for fruits, it is necessary to observe whether there are ripe fruits in the shipment or not to recognize the fruits are growing and developing normally.

Beans (long beans, green beans, peas, broad beans...)

Do not choose fruits that are shiny and have little fluff...

How to handle before use

To limit the risk of pesticide residues and bacterial contamination in vegetable and fruit products, the simplest way to process them before use while still ensuring hygiene and safety, consumers need to note:

- Wash vegetables and fruits under clean, strong running water to remove pesticides and some dirt on the surface of the product.

* Large leafy vegetables: carefully peel and wash each stem and leaf, wash one side then the other gently, without rushing.

* Small leafy vegetables must be washed in a basin with clean water several times.

* Top vegetables: when using, remove the top part because this part contains a lot of pesticides.

- Soak vegetables (eaten raw) in water: after washing, soak raw vegetables such as perilla, basil, mint, fish mint... in diluted salt water or a small amount of potassium permanganate for 5-10 minutes. This helps to disinfect some harmful microorganisms that remain on the surface of fresh vegetables and especially reduces the amount of residual pesticides inside the product.

- Fresh fruit, fresh fruit after washing under clean running water many times should still be peeled before eating.