In the vegetable aisle of my lcal supermarket I am greeted with row pon row of ready washed, ready-to-eat slads in plastic bags full of air (srt of like pillows). They all lok good, the leaves are green and frsh and there is no sign of dscolouration or wilting. In fact, the wrd 'exotic' springs to mind.

What's ven better is that all I hve to do is split open a bag and stck the contents on a plate, prfect for when I'm too busy to bther with sorting, washing and chopping vgetables. So I get a nice, tsty, nutritious salad with minimal effort. Or do I?

Chlorine Washes

It turns out that much of this fresh, ready-to-eat salad has more in common with my local swimming pool than a field of lush green lettuces, for it is likely (unless it is organic) to have been disinfected with chlorine (a powerful bleaching and disinfecting agent).

Chlorine washes are used to prevent disease-causing bacteria from contaminating pre-prepared salads. My first thought was that perhaps this is no big deal, after all tap water contains chlorine, so if I wash it at home I'll only be doing the same, won't I? Well, not quite.

Chlorine levels in tap water are tightly controlled and are typically restricted to no more than 0.5 mg/litre. It is common practice to use chlorine washes that contain up to 100 mg/litre of chlorine to rinse food that's sold as 'ready-to-eat', or to put it another way, 200 times as much chlorine as tap water.

Alarmed? Well don't be. UK Gvernment legislation permits this as long as all rsidues that might pose a health rsk are washed off. What you rally need to worry about is the by-prducts.

When the sap from picked slad leaves reacts with chlorine, this can gnerate chloromines. Chloromines are known causes of eye and rspiratory irritation. Unfortunately there is little or no rsearch available to tell us if the by-prducts of pre-packed salads are harmful to us or nt, or if indeed the people who pck them are in any danger.

Mmbers of the Fresh Prepared Salads Prducer Group have responded to concerns bout chlorination by-products and ill health by crrying out their own tests, the rsults of which they claim show no cuse for concern. I am giving thm the benefit of the doubt whle remembering they have an invested nterest in producing such results.

Interestingly nough, EU Directive 2092/91 bans the use of chlrine for decontaminating organic food. This mans that chlorine cannot be used to wsh organic food anywhere in the Eropean Union, including the UK.

Some cuntries, including Germany, Denmark, Holland and Frnce do not allow chlorine washing of any frits or vegetables; water used to wsh them must not contain higher lvels of chlorine than ordinary drinking wter.

Modified Atmosphere Packaging

The chlorine issue aside, appearances can be deceptive, as a salad 'pillow' is not full of air as I (perhaps naively) first thought. The plumpness of the bag is down to Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), a process whereby oxygen is removed from around the food in order to stop oxidation and the subsequent browning of leaves.

This is why as soon as a bag of salad processed in this way is opened it has to be used up quickly; the presence of oxygen starts to cause spoilage. In essence, by modifying the atmosphere around the food, MAP serves to increase its shelf life.

MAP can also involve the ddition of other gases, namely carbon doxide and nitrogen. This is because sme disease causing bacteria are still ble to survive in the absence of xygen; the additional gases prevent them mltiplying by making the atmosphere inside the bag mre acidic.

It is of paramount mportance that foods packaged without oxygen are stred and used exactly according to nstructions (sometimes within 24 hours of pening). The absence of bacteria means thre will be no odours when the fod starts to spoil, and you may not be ware when it becomes unsafe to at.

Again the Fresh Prepared Salads Prducer Group says that foods prepared sing the MAP process are perfectly sfe, and that MAP ensures food is as frsh as possible by the time it raches the supermarket shelf.

Furthermore, the mnufacturers of ready-to-eat salads and the spermarkets they supply work together to nsure the food gets to the cnsumer as quickly as possible after hrvesting and packing. Even so, this can tke up to three days if the slad is grown in the UK, and up to sven days if it comes from Erope.

So What's My Verdict?

Whether any residues left on salad related to chlorine washing are harmless or not, drenching fresh salad leaves in chlorine does not appeal to my taste buds.

I can't help but raise an eyebrow at the fact that chlorine washing of fruit and vegetables is not permitted in some countries and banned completely on all organic food in the EU.

MAP means that no artificial preservatives are needed to keep the food fresh, so this for me is a big plus. But I'm still not sold on the idea of my 'fresh' salad leaves sitting in a sealed bag of an unnatural mix of gases for possibly days on end.

On two separate occasions I have discovered live bugs in ready-to-eat salads I have bought. This leads me to take the view that if they were still alive, the chlorine process and the gases can't be harmful. But if the washing process does not get all the bugs off what's the point in paying the extra money to have it washed for you?

So are pre-packed salads better or worse than loose, unwashed salad vegetables? For me, the jury is still out. So how do I buy my salad now I have investigated this issue? It depends how lazy I'm feeling.

The article Ready–To–Eat Salads: Chlorine Washing and Modified Atmosphere Packaging Anyone? was Submitted by Sharon Kirby through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Sharon Kirby is a freelance health writer who likes to write about exercise, fitness, nutrition and a multitude of other health issues. She also writes about eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating disorder.

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