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Cleaning Food: Vegetables, Fruits, Eggs, Even Some Meats. Simple Chemistry to the Rescue
Thu, 06/27/2013 - 2:29pm
Cleaning Food - The Peace Corps (and Smithsonian) Way. The Parcells Oxygen Soak .. Using Clorox. Huh? Yup, read on .... and bring your chemistry knowledge with you (and likely learn more, I sure did). I'm going to put the info I'd want to print and have to refer to right up top, then under, explanation, elaboration:
Step-by-Step Method for Cleaning Foods 
The Water and the Clorox - The Solution
Make the bath for soaking the fruits or vegetables by adding 1 teaspoon of Clorox bleach to 1 gallon of pure, clean water. Preferably "Purified, ozonated, and/or electrolyte-enhanced water".
Tap water is acceptable, but not preferable.
(Initially, Dr Purcell recommended 1/2 t/gal., but increased it due to the increased toxins in foods, per page 135 in The Fat Flush Plan. Where it is made very clear that only Clorox brand, due to the high manufacturing standards used, was suggested by Dr Purcell AND since that time Clorox came out with so many variations THAT ARE NOT WHAT IS RECOMMENDED (such as additives to make it splash less, or the type of Clorox they marketed that's safe for color, etc.) PLAIN CLOROX and ONLY BRAND CLOROX is what they relate and which I'm relating as well here for YOUsers' benefit.
Soak - Timing is Everything! Not too long, not too short -- juuuuuust right!
Place the fruit, vegetables, or other foods to be treated. The length of soak time is very
important.
Get out your 'vegetable timer' -- yes, for those of us no longer baking, we are shaking -- the water off of our vegetables after the right amount of soak time. Note: I'm providing the soak times that are provided by Ann Luise in The Fat Flush book, but there were other times listed elsewhere on the Internet, where I found more in-depth information about the chemical process that helps explain WHY, which -- just the way I am and have always been -- I wanted to know. So see what you find if you do some Searching too, if you see that you like this concept.)
Make a fresh soak for each group.
Leafy vegetables - 15 min.
Root and heavy-fiber vegetables - 30 min.
Thin- and medium-skinned berries and fruits - 30min.
Thick-skinned fruits - 30 min.
Citus fruits and bananas - 30 min.
Eggs, meats, poultry, fish 20 min.
(not for ground meats and poultry)
If a little is good, more is NOT better! Very important -- Do not use more Clorox bleach than instructed, and do not leave food in the soak longer than the suggested time, green leafy vegetables will turn brown from oxidation. No harm is done, but the eye appeal is spoiled.
Rinse - AGAIN for THE time recommended, above, for the soak - and don't skip this step, read why.
Place the food in a fresh water rinse for 10 minutes. This is a important step, because the fresh water brings new oxygen into the food before you drain and store it.
Additionally, you can use apple cider vinegar or 3/4 cup of 3% hydrogen peroxide in place of the Clorox, but Dr Parcell's lifetime of research, Ann Louise Gittleman says, suggested that the detoxifying results will be far from the same. Apparently Dr Parcell kept a pretty low profile and Ann Luise was one of those who was able to learn from this 'legend' of Clorox!
Store
Let the food drain very well before placing it in the refrigerator. There are bags that are sold that have properties that make them beneficial for keeping produce in, and I've found they hold up well and I've experienced good results. They're green, literally and figuratively. I reuse the plastic bags I get purchasing produce to put the parts I don't consume into for freezing and then I take those on a regular basis to people who garden and LOVE having my 'garbage'. I also recycle and reduce and reuse in many other ways and this week had so lilttle trash in my garbage bag in the kitchen I skipped putting it out at the curb. I also keep a bag in the freezer of things like fish and meat scraps that end up going to the landfill so the trash doesn't 'have to go out' every week. I save a trash bag here and there that way, and again, reduce my 'footprint'.
The Benefits
Fruits and vegetables will keep longer. Wilted greens will return to a fresh crispness. With the cleansing soak, the flavors of both fruits and vegetables will be enhanced greatly – they will taste as fresh as if they had just been picked from the garden or orchard. Food that is cleansed in this matter has experienced 'out with the bad/dangerous additives and in with the good/oxygen'.
I found this on a website, thought I'd add it here (editing in 25Nov2017 with over 6,000 reads of this topic so far): Note the way M, below does the rinse is different than what I've shared, above.
I experienced parasite ingestion last year, from contaminated produce. It was a parasite known as Cyclospora, and hit the United States from June 2013 to August 2013, with 631 people infected over 25 states. I got really really sick for over 6 weeks, and had symptoms of a bad flu. I got it from fresh Basil and fresh Raspberries.
Since then, I started using Dr. Hazel Parcells Oxygen soak using Clorox. Many governmental health departments have adopted it, and is the essential means of sanitizing food for the Peace Corps. The Parcells Method formula is also registered with the Smithsonian Institution, as an exhibit under 'simplified kitchen chemistry'.
Dr. Parcell was the head of the Department of Nutrition at Sierra State University, and developed this oxygen soak back in the 1960s, after over two decades of research and experimentation.
You can Search her produce soak, but a quick summary of it is:
1 tsp of Clorox to 1 gallon of water (do not substitute other bleach products for Clorox)
1/2 tsp of Clorox to 1 gallon of water if using concentrated Clorox (most product is now the concentrated version)
Leafy veggies - soak for 15 minutes
Root of thick skinned veggies - soak 30 minutes
Berries, peaches, thick skinned fruits - soak 15 minutes
Thick skinned fruits (citrus, bananas, apples) - soak 30 minutes
Triple rinse all produce after soaks, to remove all residual clorox which is 100% water soluble.
I do this for all my produce, including organic produce, and have found it an inexpensive and safe produce wash process and due to it's oxygenation process find the produce perks up and stores longer.
Hope this helps,
M(name removed)
"The Parcells Oxygen Soak has been used around the world with great success–particularly in many developing countries. Governmental health departments have adopted it. It is the essential means of sanitizing food for the Peace Corps.
The Parcells Method formula is also registered with the Smithsonian Institution as an exhibit under “Simplified Kitchen Chemistry" -- (Note: I found a resource on the Internet which was someone's personal website where they organized their notes and didn't have credits for quotes nor were they necessarily worried about plagerism, so I will simply say "unknown" on the source of this. But read on, to how I first learned of this technique.
I was surprised to initially learn about this on page 134-135 of The Fat Flush Plan, by Ann Louise Gittleman, M.S., C.N.S., in the Chapter "The Master Fat Flush Shopping List", that way back in 1988 when the author wrote/published her first book, Beyond Pritikin, that the common household product, Clorox bleach, could be used as a food-cleanser.
But wait, isn't chlorine one of the problems with drinking tap water? It's necessary to keep bugs from getting the better of us, I have no problem with that chemical being added to water, it's easily removed by simple and inexpensive carbon filters -- unlike the difficult to remove version of fluoride chemical which is unfortunately added to many water supplies despite being a proven neurotoxin as well as interfering with iodine in the tissues of the body which uptake that important nutrient.
(Please see the many topics we have at Lumigrate on SWIG or Safe Water is Great, in the supplementing what we eat and drink forum or the forum on the brain/neurological system related to diminished IQ with increased consumption.)
Chlorinated water has the unfortunate side-effect of impacting the 'biosphere' in our gut, causing 'dysbiosis'; hence it's recommended to filter it out of tap and shower water, which thankfully arrives at our homes at the tap with the safety of 'better living through chemistry' related to the added chlorine. (It's also not good for inhaling, having on your skin and hair when bathing or showering.)
I'm apparently not the only person who is confused by this because the next part of the first paragraph goes on to say "Please note that Clorox is not the same as chlorine, the chemical disinfectant added to drinking water, which has been linked to heart disease and cancer. In fact, the active ingredient in Clorox, sodium hypochlorite, breaks down into salt and water."
This was discovered, the oxygenating value of the Clorox bath, by a Dr Parcell when she was head of the Department of Nutrition at Sierra State University, which was a naturopathic college at the time, the 1960s. Yes, when I was a child.
Why didn't I know this back then or since? Our produce and our awareness have finally come to the point where they're tainted enough by pesticides, gassed to affect ripeness and affect 'shelf life' that masses of people, myself included, put it on their radar to be concerned about, become educated about, become active and proactive about and changing their habits. So if you're reading this, congratulations and welcome to the club!
I wanted to garden as a child, and as a teen was fortunate to have a very large garden that was as much a hobby for my mother, increasingly, and she got into organic techniques. But I don't recall that we used Clorox. I know we had aphids and went through great measures to get them off the broccholi, in particular and also cauliflower. When you're growing things and eating them or processing them for later right on your property it's different than when you're purchasing things from others who have grown them or been the middle man/retailer.
Molds, fungi, parasites and their eggs are all things that can be on fruit and vegetables, which we are increasingly aware of the QUALITY as well as QUANTITY for ideal wellness.
We might be able to purchase organically grown, but that just has to do with what they do with the soil and spray on or not for herbs and pests --- what about things that might have fallen from the air onto the produce in the field or anywhere along the way to your kitchen? It is important to treat foods to help rid them of the myriad of 'evils' that might be upon them: poisonous sprays, bacteria, fungus and heavy metals.
More history: Dr. Hazel Parcells developed the food and water cleansings methods over two decades of research and experimentation, and utilized the Clorox bleach food cleansing method for four decades without complaint from anyone who adopted it. There were no reports or observations of any kind of unsatisfactory reactions of any kind.
Isn't it kind of backwards today, that we label "organic" as special? Think about before the chemical age of agriculture, everything was NATURALLY that way. In only a century, everything has changed and we're wise to adapt to how much of the life-giving capabilities of plants that we consume as fruits and vegetables has been altered.
In the book I'm referring to, Bi-O-Kleen is referred to as a commercial product, or Organiclean. Their websites and phone numbers are provided. I'd purchased Fit in the vegetable section of the grocery store for many years now, but as the amount of vegetables and fruits I use increased I was looking for other methods. And this one, once I read it over, made sense, so I've been giving it a try the last weeks and am pleased so far with the results.
It's important to note that it's only Clorox brand that this works with, unless there are new identical products on the market.
Here's the scoop: The sodium hypochlorite in the Clorox bleach is a natural oxygenator, and this sets up an action with the natural chemicals
in the food, making it “fresh” again. I read on one website that the action of the Clorox is said to be magnetic, which means that its strong negative ionic charge pulls the toxic, positively ionic charged molecules, out of the produce.
The beneficial power of the soak is actually in its dilution, not in the Clorox per se. The bath of water witih Clorox uses the energy of the electrons freed by dilution, not the concentrated Clorox, to accomplish its goal. Clorox bleach is cleaning the food, "eliminating" any type of fungus, bacteria, or other foreign material on it that might contribute to deterioration to occur faster than usual. (Their words, and I hope it 'eliminates' but sometimes it seems more plausible some things are eliminated but others are reduced -- and overall it's less of a 'load' on your system (see our load theory topic, titled "Are You Loaded?" by Dr Marc Spurlock (MD).
It was noted that most bleach products on the market use the same or similar chemical formulas, but in all those years mentioned above, Dr. Parcells found that the original Clorox brand was the best to use for cleaning food. She believed it was the manufacturer’s superior filtration systems and their use of stainless steel vats.
Household Bleach vs. Chlorine
Household bleach is not chlorine. Unfortunately, it is sometimes called “chlorine bleach.” Think about table salt, sodium chloride. The Clorox manufacturer purchases chlorine and makes household bleach by bubbling it into a solution of water and sodium hydroxide and all the chlorine is converted to a sodium hypochlorite solution. At this point, it’s no more "chlorine" than is common table salt. It's no more harmful to the environment than salt -- which can be a factor in certain situations, but it's very different than what you're thinking of with 'chlorine'. Inside a Clorox bleach bottle is a 5.25%
solution of sodium hypochlorite and water.
The Bleach Cycle: Salt Water to Salt Water
Chlorine manufacturers produce chlorine and sodium hydroxide by running an electrical current through salt water, and household bleach is produced: a 5.25% solution of hypochlorite and water. During use as a cleaner and disinfectant, and during disposal, about 95 to 98% of the bleach quickly breaks down into salt. The remaining 2 to 5% of the bleach breaks down to form byproducts that are effectively treated at municipal wastewater treatment plants or septic systems through biodegradation. By the end of the cycle, the sodium hypochlorite has once again become salt.
GET IN THE HABIT OF READING LABELS AND KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE USING, and CHECK and be SURE what Clorox's product is still what is related, above.
(Thanks to Dr Marc Spurlock, our resident environmental medicine expert at Lumigrate.com who provided info in forums from 2009 for a couple/few years for telling me about this book and expert author, I'd just dismissed her and it as another 'gimmicky' title and perhaps was dismissive of her not having a D of some sort after her name. Tsk, tsk, I learned a lesson from that! Just as all my assistants as an occupational therapist were absolutely as smart and knowledgeable and effective with patients as the 'therapists', we sometimes 'sort' by those initials after the names, unfortunately. Easy to do when having so many experts and books to chose from these days, websites, etc.)
__________________
Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!
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In the early 80's a client at Complete Health Services decided to put the Clorox bath to the test. She organized a before and after Clorox bath experiment at Sommer Frey Lab in Milwaukee (est 1900). She knew from her research that commercial peaches were exposed to chemicals containing mercury. (Interesting that peaches are currently at the top of the list of chemically contaminated fruit.) The people at the lab thought it was a cute idea promoted by some health nuts but quickly changed their demeanor after the Clorox bath consistently removed 70% to 75% of the mercury. The average was 72%. We passed out the report in all future cooking classes, Love at First Taste, which we taught for 20 years from 1978 to 1998.
Then, in the mid 90's a client I was working with moved to Seattle. We stayed in touch and she mailed me an extensive study performed by a holistic community magazine in Seattle that promoted local alternative services. This publication ran a series comparing the purity of organic and non-organic produce by meticulously testing for chemical contamination.
Shockingly, organic produce sometimes tested as contaminated as commercial produce.
Personally, I was slow to accept the Clorox bath. The chef in our cooking class, Roger Ullenberg -- owner and chef of Au Natural Restaurant, loved the Clorox bath and insisted on teaching it to students. During class he demonstrated it's effectiveness on bananas.*
Roger learned about the Clorox bath from an icon in natural health; Dr. Hazel Parcells, a well known naturopathic healer who lived to 106. Dr. Parcells based her work on radionics using pendulums and other devices, but she did not delve into the chemistry. During class I was so impressed with improvement in the quality of the produce washed in Clorox I couldn't help but be won over, even against my will (which was definitely the case). Later, when the Sommer Frey experiment was done, I became fully aware of how right-on this technique is.
To this day our household uses it on commercial produce, and maybe we should on organic items as well. However, I now trust the purity of organics more than in the past.
If you try it you'll be impressed.
*Class Experiment: Roger would take bananas from the same bunch and separate them into two groups -- one group went into tap water and the other into the Clorox bath (1/2 teaspoon per gallon of tap water). Only Roger, Karen and I knew which was which. After 15 to 20 minutes in the Clorox bath (bananas are thick skinned) they were triple rinsed, peeled and cut into bite size pieces. Everything was kept separate -- one platter of Clorox washed bananas and another platter of tap water washed bananas. So, the taste test was on.
Each platter was passed around the class and without fail in every class for over 20 years virtually every single student specifically preferred the Clorox washed bananas. Why? Because they didn't have the metallic after taste so common with bananas. It was very distinct. I could tell the difference every time. This was a fun way to introduce a serious subject. Give it a try. I think you'll be convinced.
Jim Ehmke, CN
Provided by Biotics Research Corporation
Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!