Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Your kitchen sponge teems with bacteria – should you use a brush instead?
Most of us use kitchen sponges to wash and clean dishes, cutting boards, and kitchen utensils. But are those sponges clean? Actually, sponges have holes and pockets where harmful bacteria or fungi can settle and grow. Even though not all bacteria are harmful to our health, some of them could cause diseases, such as salmonella and e-coli. How can we reduce or eliminate such pathogenic bacteria from kitchen sponges? Heating a sponge in a microwave, rinsing it with hot, soapy water, spraying disinfectant, or putting it in a dishwasher surely kills the vast majority of the pathogens but not all. Another way is to use a kitchen brush instead, which doesn’t harbor as many bacteria as a sponge does. Whichever the method might be, you want to clean the sponge or brush, the knife, and the cutting board thoroughly, especially after they’ve touched raw meat or seafood.
Read the article and learn how to reduce pathogenic bacteria from your kitchen sponge.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250218-when-should-you-throw-away-your-kitchen-sponge
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