Watermelon is the quintessential summer season fruit: candy, juicy, and brightly coloured sufficient to immediately elevate any picnic, barbecue, or cocktail social gathering. However to guard you, your loved ones, and your visitors from bringing house a not-so-fun remembrance of your outside occasion—a nasty case of meals poisoning—you’ll wish to be sure to’re taking an important step earlier than carving in.

“Washing melons earlier than slicing is essential,” Darin Detwiler, PhD, a meals security professional and affiliate educating professor at Northeastern College’s School of Skilled Research, tells SELF. Whereas the thought would possibly by no means have crossed your thoughts earlier than—in spite of everything, you don’t eat the rind— this recommendation really is sensible when you consider it.

In contrast to berries, watermelons develop on the bottom, exposing them to all kinds of contaminants—mud, soil, soiled water, animal waste, improperly composted manure, and extra. As soon as harvested, they’ll choose up much more throughout storage, dealing with, and transport as they make their manner from area to retailer after which from retailer to kitchen counter. By the point you buy your melon, it’s in all probability been touched by dozens of various individuals, a few of whom could have petted animals, picked their noses, used the toilet, or in any other case made contact with germs beforehand with out washing their arms first. “You don’t know the place their arms have been,” Dr. Detwiler says.

Then, whenever you take a knife to your melon, the blade can switch all that nasty stuff straight from the outside to the inside, “dragging micro organism straight into your meals,” Dr. Detwiler says. From salmonella to Listeria to E. coli, these bugs have the potential to make you critically sick. (In reality, contaminated watermelon has been implicated in a bunch of salmonella outbreaks within the US over the past decade or so.) In the event you do turn out to be unwell, you can probably anticipate basic meals poisoning signs like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which usually pop up inside just a few hours to a number of days and final across the identical period of time. Spending a lovely summer season day camped out by the bathroom is an expertise certain to make you want you’d by no means taken a chunk within the first place.

How watermelon is normally ready additionally places it at a sanitary drawback, in response to Dr. Detwiler. In contrast to, say, corn on the cob, watermelon is often eaten uncooked, so potential pathogens aren’t killed off by cooking. For that motive, “the one efficient measure” that you can take to cut back the meals poisoning threat is washing your melon earlier than chopping into it, Dr. Detwiler says. This removes potential exterior contaminants earlier than they’ve an opportunity to succeed in the inside.

Not solely is washing efficient, it additionally doesn’t need to be difficult. First, rinse your melon in cool working water (holding it below the kitchen faucet, say). Subsequent, scrub it throughout with a clear brush. Then, pat it dry with a paper towel to cut back floor moisture, since micro organism like moist surfaces. “Don’t use cleaning soap or bleach, simply water and friction,” Dr. Detwiler says. Lastly, make it possible for your knife and chopping floor are clear as effectively; in any other case, you run into the extra threat of transferring micro organism from the knife or board to the watermelon flesh.

Watermelon is the quintessential summer season fruit: candy, juicy, and brightly coloured sufficient to immediately elevate any picnic, barbecue, or cocktail social gathering. However to guard you, your loved ones, and your visitors from bringing house a not-so-fun remembrance of your outside occasion—a nasty case of meals poisoning—you’ll wish to be sure to’re taking an important step earlier than carving in.

“Washing melons earlier than slicing is essential,” Darin Detwiler, PhD, a meals security professional and affiliate educating professor at Northeastern College’s School of Skilled Research, tells SELF. Whereas the thought would possibly by no means have crossed your thoughts earlier than—in spite of everything, you don’t eat the rind— this recommendation really is sensible when you consider it.

In contrast to berries, watermelons develop on the bottom, exposing them to all kinds of contaminants—mud, soil, soiled water, animal waste, improperly composted manure, and extra. As soon as harvested, they’ll choose up much more throughout storage, dealing with, and transport as they make their manner from area to retailer after which from retailer to kitchen counter. By the point you buy your melon, it’s in all probability been touched by dozens of various individuals, a few of whom could have petted animals, picked their noses, used the toilet, or in any other case made contact with germs beforehand with out washing their arms first. “You don’t know the place their arms have been,” Dr. Detwiler says.

Then, whenever you take a knife to your melon, the blade can switch all that nasty stuff straight from the outside to the inside, “dragging micro organism straight into your meals,” Dr. Detwiler says. From salmonella to Listeria to E. coli, these bugs have the potential to make you critically sick. (In reality, contaminated watermelon has been implicated in a bunch of salmonella outbreaks within the US over the past decade or so.) In the event you do turn out to be unwell, you can probably anticipate basic meals poisoning signs like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which usually pop up inside just a few hours to a number of days and final across the identical period of time. Spending a lovely summer season day camped out by the bathroom is an expertise certain to make you want you’d by no means taken a chunk within the first place.

How watermelon is normally ready additionally places it at a sanitary drawback, in response to Dr. Detwiler. In contrast to, say, corn on the cob, watermelon is often eaten uncooked, so potential pathogens aren’t killed off by cooking. For that motive, “the one efficient measure” that you can take to cut back the meals poisoning threat is washing your melon earlier than chopping into it, Dr. Detwiler says. This removes potential exterior contaminants earlier than they’ve an opportunity to succeed in the inside.

Not solely is washing efficient, it additionally doesn’t need to be difficult. First, rinse your melon in cool working water (holding it below the kitchen faucet, say). Subsequent, scrub it throughout with a clear brush. Then, pat it dry with a paper towel to cut back floor moisture, since micro organism like moist surfaces. “Don’t use cleaning soap or bleach, simply water and friction,” Dr. Detwiler says. Lastly, make it possible for your knife and chopping floor are clear as effectively; in any other case, you run into the extra threat of transferring micro organism from the knife or board to the watermelon flesh.