On supermarket conveyer belts

Is it bad to raw dog your produce on the grocery store conveyor belt (to avoid using the single use plastic bags)?

One wonders how dirty those conveyer belts are. These days they’re probably lab-grade sterile given how trendy spraying and wiping has become, but in 2019 I’d bet the bacteria levels on a grocery conveyer rivaled those found on rollercoaster harnesses.

It doesn’t really matter if your produce picks up a little extra something-something while they’re riding along that black rubber highway because you diligently wash your produce when you get home from the grocery store. Right?

I do not always wash my produce because I am lazy and armed with the following piece of knowledge: The risk of getting food poisoning is lowest with produce that gets cooked or peeled (e.g. onions, mangos) and highest with the stuff that gets eaten raw (e.g. romaine lettuce, cilantro). I always wash the risky stuff and I have a mixed record with the stuff that gets cooked or peeled.  

But what about pesticides? (...you might ask, if you are from a very blue state.) Well I doubt the supermarket is crop dusting El Conveyer Real but also I don’t have a good answer for you.  I buy groceries at street stalls in the lower east side of Manhattan and I arrive home tired and hungry. Sometimes I wash my produce, other times I don’t. I probably consume the median amount of pesticides and I don’t really know what it means. Maybe my gut biome looks like Chernobyl or maybe it looks like a Phish concert.

Scientific renderings of the possible states of my gut biome

If you reside in the quadrant representing “avoid single use plastic bags” and “doesn’t wash produce” then you’re playing the food-poisoning lottery. Just like every other lottery, you probably won’t hit the jackpot (today’s prize: crippling diarrhea) but you still could, so just wash your produce.

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