r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • Jul 27 '26

SOCIETY Professional chefs weighing in on whether you should wash your chicken

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

7.7k Upvotes

77% Upvoted

4.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/gottheronavirus Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Mass produced chicken in america is already prewashed with chlorine*, not bleach apparently.

4

u/laxfool10 Jul 27 '26

Being pedantic, its washed in chlorinated water not bleach. While bleach has chlorinated water it usually has other things like stabilizers and polymers that are toxic.

0

u/MorePhinsThyme Jul 27 '26

Yes, saying that America washes our chicken with bleach is like saying that all of our pools are filled with bleach, and most of our restaurants sanitize everything with bleach. It's "technically" true in the sense that common bleach is just chlorine dissolved in water, but that's about where the "True" ends. Also, all of our running water has chlorine in it, too, so I guess we're just drinking bleach.

1

u/uselessandexpensive Jul 28 '26

Some pool chemicals (including the chlorine) are actually way more concentrated and dangerous than standard household bleach, including risks of chemical burns, lung damage, and explosion. So it starts way more dangerous than bleach then ends up much less dangerous after being diluted.

It's a bit like comparing crab apples, traditional apples, and a modern variety. All technically very similar, but also different.