What are the risks of eating a tub of Sainsbury’s Blackberries without washing them?

30 comments

1. Smoke some cigarettes. The smoke will suffocate the bacteria in your stomach.

2. Best prepare your will, you’ll likely not see tomorrow…

3. Tbh I never wash fruit or veg from a supermarche. Made it to 31 and my brains is still cromulent.

4. Given that humans have been eating blackberries off the bush for thousands of years I’m going to go with *nothing*.

   Supermarkets put that on fruit/veg purely to pass the buck in the infinitesimally small chance that something bad happens to you after eating it.

   Statistically you have more chance of being abducted by Abaddon the Despoiler and forced to partake in his remake of that cool as fuck musical episode of *How I met your mother* than you do of getting ill from unwashed supermarket blackberries. *Probably*

5. Just don’t think of all the creatures that have had a cheeky nibble, then used them as a lavatory.

6. Hepatitis. In some places, fruit pickers are paid by the kilo, so it’s not unknown for them to urinate on their pickings before they are weighed to increase their weight.
   You’re then at the mercy of whatever the picker was suffering from at the time.

7. It’s over

8. I should think you’ll be fine. As a kid, I regularly ate loads of them off bushes growing along the lanes and I didn’t know about the adage not to eat from the low branches in case dogs had peed on them. As an adult, I’ve got some in my garden, and while I normally rinse them, sometimes I don’t – I’ll just snack on a few from the bush while gardening.

9. I’ve never washed any fruit or veg, you’ll be fine

10. The “risks” are almost zero, you’re fine.

11. Death

12. E coli is the main concern here. But if you’ve eaten them without an issues, I very much doubt there would be any further issues.

13. why not just wash them

14. You may over inflate and be sent to the squashing room.

15. I have never washed fruit in my life and I am fine.

16. Most fruits and veg are cleaned up for market, but blackberries and raspberries are very delicate, and as a rule, are not. Better safe than sorry.

17. Don’t worry, you will probably be run over by a bus.

18. I have been enjoying super market bought blue berries for nigh on 30 years without washing them, I am OK and I also feed them to my children without issue.

    I remember the days when it was difficult to find blue berries, before they became a popular super food in the early 2000s, and around that time a tub would cost £2.30 or so and the price remained the same until Covid , now the same tub is £3.70 or so. I wrote this paragraph to back up my blueberry eating credentials.

19. You only need to worry about the extra fingers you will grow – they’ll start to show up about 48 to 72 hours after finishing the blackberries.

20. Probably not safe.

    Best to stick to Waitrose Blackberries

21. A lot of people are saying they eat them off the bush and they’re fine. But that’s missing the point. I will eat fruit my family grow in the garden without washing it. Only I’ve touched it and there’s been no pesticides put on them.

    But when you buy them in the supermarket they have probably had other peoples hands on them (did they wash their hands after going toilet last??) and they are probably liberally doused in pesticides.

    So very unlikely to make you ill, but for grossness factor and reduction in pesticide consumption I would wash them

22. I ate some from there recently and they tasted like disinfectant. It was grim. I took them back and the woman said ‘so you don’t want them?!’ ….. no! No I don’t want blueberries soaked in dettol thank you for asking

23. Some fruits are ok. But berries tend to go moldy even before their sell by date. I always soak them in cold water with a bIt of salt at least

24. I’ve been eating them right from the bush next to the canal my whole life and I’ve made it to 41 🤷😅 I think you’ll be fine.

25. I wash all my fruit and veg because I fear:

    Bugs hiding in my fruit

    Pesticides

    Someone or something has peed on them

    A fruit picker has been to the toilet and not washed their hands before continuing to pick my fruits

    Someone sneezed on them

    There might be rotten pieces that I’d miss and accidentally eat if I don’t wash them before

    Plenty of people will have touched them before they get to me

26. I live in an area where fruit and veg are grown which are picked by hand a lot.

    I am not worried so much about pesticides. I think that if they are sprayed whilst the food is growing they will be included within the flesh.

    I am however much more worried about disease. Fruit pickers do not have access to toilets or handwashing facilities during the day whilst they are out picking. I do not want to contract a disease of poor hand hygiene.

    Tldr: I don’t want to eat human shit

27. You might get the shits, you might not.
    We’ve never washed fruit from supermarkets and still live to tell the tale.
    I’m sure that they go through a washing or rinsing process at some point because they’re not covered in dirt/dust, but there’s also a chance an employee touched them without washing their hands or someone coughed on them.
    If the risk of pesticides was high enough to be a problem then supermarkets wouldn’t be allowed to sell them like that.

28. You’re washing off residual agricultural chemicals from the farming, and any diesel soot or brake dust that got onto the berries while in transit or storage. Just run them under the tap for a little while.

    Supermarket warehouses are FULL of nasty carcinogenic filth.

29. I opened some blackberries last week and a tiny fly flew out of the container. Did I wash them? Noooo. Am I dead? Not yet.

30. Once ate a bunch of blackberries from some bushes. Wasn’t until the 7th or so that I realised they were all full of maggots. You’ll be fine