Okotest has made ready-made fruit salads. The verdict: We often take in more germs than vitamins with the supposedly healthy salads.
The magazine Okotest is as well known as it is feared for its independent tests in the food industry.
The latest object of the test editors: ready-made fruit salads, like the ones you can buy at the refrigerated counter of every supermarket. Apples, bananas, grapes, and pineapples are cut into small pieces โ you might think that it is better and healthier than the sandwich on hand. But the verdict of the testers is devastating:
Finished fruit salad contains fewer vitamins than freshly cut ones, but often an extra portion of germs or even mold
This is how Okotest tested it
The testers bought mixed fruit salads in 12 supermarket and coffee shop chains. These were subjected to both a sensory test (smell/taste) and a laboratory test for germs, bacteria, and fungi.
The result: A single fruit salad (Fresh for You colorful fruit mix from Real) did not exceed one of the guideline values โโof the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology (DGHM) in any of the three batches examined. In addition, Have Tutti Frutti from Karstadt and Rewe Exotic Fruit Salad performed well in the test.” At the bottom of the table was the fig salad from Kaiser’s and “Refreshing Area” from Coffee Fellows.” In the case of the latter, one of the three batches that were sensorically examined was so spoiled that the testers did not want to try it again after smelling it.
The management of Coffee Fellows has already reacted and announced that the product in question would be removed from the branches until the germ contamination was clarified.
Better to chop the fruit yourself
Even if some salads were not contaminated with germs in the test: You get most of the vitamins if you cut fruit yourself. Because as soon as the fruit is no longer protected from air, the oxidation process begins, which breaks down vitamins.
The Okotest editorial team also measured the time it takes to freshly cut fruit salad: “Washing your hands, peeling and cutting two bananas, washing an apple and chopping it up, washing and plucking grapes โ three minutes. Half a melon takes a little more time, then we’re at 4:41 minutes. Now wash the knives and boards, stir the fruit salad – 5:51 minutes, done.” This is really not the world.
From an environmental point of view, it is of course not optimal to buy fruit in a plastic bowl with a plastic fork and then throw it away immediately afterward.
