Using bicarbonate of soda to remove food 'chemicals'

[montecristo]

Overheard: if you fill two containers with water and dilute some bicarbonate of soda in them - then put organic food in one and non-organic in the other (e.g. apples, or chicken), the non-organic will produce a scummy layer. Which is the 'bad' chemicals being extracted from the non-organic produce.

Is that plausible?

[Einion Yrth]

organic means "carbon based"; all food is organic. If someone chooses to redefine "organic" then I'd need to know precisely what their definition is before I could sanely comment.

[davepoth]

I'll go with "guff". The chemicals used on chicken and apples are completely different, so there's no logical reason why they would have an identical result if placed in a bicarbonate of soda solution.

[grumbledoak]

It will be a mild alkaline solution. That might be a better cleaning agent than water alone.

But the suggestion that this is removing "bad" chemicals from non-organic crops, while the organic crops don't have any pesticides on them, is rubbish. Organic farmers can use different pesticides. Some of those are not very nice either.

[Simpo Two]

I call bullst.

The hippies who tout this nonsense on social media think that anything with a 'chemical' in it is bad. They are idiots.

[Moonhawk]

How does the bicarb know what is good and bad?

[Monty Python]

In a word - no. Sodium bicarbonate will react with acids to generate carbon dioxide, but little else, and even then, unless the acid is strong the reaction will be quite mild.