About Mary Hughes-Cole Expertise I can answer questions pretaining to food preparation,cooking and storage and how to properly prepare food so as to not contaminate it or make yourself or anyone else ill. I cannot answer questions pretaining to wholesale distribution, manufacturing, etc.
Experience I have been a health researcher for forty seven years, and have been cooking for fifty years. I have learned a great deal pretaining to contamination of foods, bacteria, parasites, the control and prevention of disease. I have never made anyone ill and am living proof of what I profess to know.
Organizations I am the Founder and Director of Duane International Fullfillment Foundation, founded in 1989. Your Arizona Health Connection is a division of this foundation. We do research on disease, health topics, do clinical tests on the effects of supplementation on the body and your health. I personally have counselled thousands of men on mens health a field of expertiese. Recent member of National Health and Wellness Club
Question I would like to bake potatoes in the microwave oven. How do I wash the potatoes before baking? Do I simply rub the potatoes with my fingers under water, or do I have to scrub the potatoes with a brush? Thank you for your answer. Al Brown
Answer Hi AL,
When considering potatoes of course, how clean the potato is when you begin is the most important thing to consider. Today many potatoes are already scrubbed before even placing in the produce department. The reason is simple, they are covered with dirt and big gocery stores like Krogers are not going to put something dirty in their display cases. You are probably not a farmer or you would already know what I am going to say.
This dirt is often parasitic. Dirt as you know also contains much bacteria, some good some bad depending on what you want to do with the dirt. When considering eating something like greens or potatoes that are often covered with dirt you want to clean these thing as well as possible before eating. Borax is natural cleaning product. You'll find it with the laundry products (Wallmart). It only takes a pinch to a quart of water. Soak the potatoes for at least fifteen minutes in Borax water, a teaspoon for a sink of water. Pour that water off and then scrub. Remember this when washing your hands, it takes at least fifteen minutes to kill germs when washing. Few things kill germs instantly. anything that powerful you wouldn't be eating or putting on your skin. Grain alcohol is the only thing I have ever read about that is safe, espersol alcohol causes cancer.
I grant you heat kills a lot of things but who knows just how much heat or how long a germ has to be exposed to heat before it is dead. We eat dead germs all the time we just don't realize how often. We even eat live ones too, they are considered by some experts to be part of our intestinal health. Some scientists and doctors believe a few bad germs in the intestine stimulate the immune system. If that is the case it would explain how a person could live in filth and survive. This has not been supported by my reaserch. I have learned that the more disease we are exposed to the more these germs, viruses, bateria, and parasites harbor in the skin and body. I am a clean nut. I clean everything I can because I have seen first hand what they can do.
How many germs you want to eat is a preference. French eat all kind of germs in the snails, mushrooms, and oysters they eat. Personally I like all my food exceptionally clean. If you want the potato to be free of germs then scrub the heck out of it and pray. An even better thing to do would be to read Hulda Clark's Book, The Cure For All Diseases, in this book she explains many things especially how to care for ourselves concerning parasites and germs and the effects of chemicals on our immune system. My personal research agrees with hers and I have seen these parasites first hand and know that they cause cancer. I have another book published by UpJohn that shows them in detailed pictures, and another one that attributes every disease know to man to partsites, bacteria, and viruses.
If a few germs don't bother you, it is possible to clean the potato enough simply by just washing it with your fingers. A good brush is good to but then how clean is the brush.
The potato is digested in the mouth, the most important thing to remember is to chew the potato. Putting something on the potato that you have to chew making you leave the potato in your mouth longer will help not only to digest it better but to kill more germs. The enzymes in our mouth are very important in killing germs and digesting things. Most of the potato is digested in the mouth and many other carbatydrates as well.
Just be sure to punch the little holes in the potato with a fork before putting in the microwave. It is probably the only thing that I have acturally cooked in a microwave and really liked. The reason is because people put alumium foil on potatoes and bake them thus making them poisonous.
At least the microwave just cooks the potato as a potato and they are really good this way.
The thing that I would be more concerned with about cooking in the microwave, is whether the microwave is clean. I have seen some microvaves that make me want to cry they are so filthy. Keep your microwave clean and spotless and don't worry that much about the potatoe. The Idaho potato is the best baked potato, but I personlly prefer the red potato as they are better for you. Good luck in your potato cleaning and cooking.
