Health knowledge on the cutting board

We cannot do without cutting boards for three meals a day at home. Cutting boards made of different materials have their own advantages and disadvantages. We might as well choose carefully to find the cutting board that best suits our cooking needs.

Cutting Board Buying Guide

Wooden cutting board

Advantages: Economical and durable. Wooden cutting boards are high in density, strong in toughness, thick and heavy, and very sturdy to use. They are suitable for chopping ribs and stuffing. Cutting boards made of jujube, ginkgo, elm, soapberry, birch or willow are better.

Disadvantages: Easy to breed bacteria. Wooden cutting boards are easy to produce knife marks, and the depressions are generally difficult to clean, which is very easy to breed bacteria. Wooden cutting boards have strong water absorption and are not easy to air dry. They are prone to mold in a humid environment for a long time.

Plastic cutting board

Advantages: Can be changed frequently and easy to distinguish. Most plastic cutting boards are made of PE material. If you buy a good one, it is indeed environmentally friendly and not easy to mold. Plastic cutting boards are light and cheap, and easier to clean. You can use different colors to distinguish the different uses of cutting boards, such as red for cutting raw meat, green for cutting vegetables, and yellow for cutting cooked food and fruits. This can avoid cross contamination and is more hygienic.

Disadvantages: fragile and easy to deform. Plastic cutting boards are easy to deform when exposed to high temperatures. Plastic cutting boards are not suitable for cutting pork elbows that have just come out of the pot. Plastic cutting boards are fragile and cannot withstand strong cutting. Some rough plastic cutting boards are easy to cut out residues, which enter the human body with food and cause damage to the liver and kidneys. Be careful to look at and touch them when purchasing. Some dark-colored plastic cutting boards may contain more harmful substances. It is best to choose plastic cutting boards that are translucent, of good quality, uniform in color, and free of impurities and irritating odors.

Bamboo cutting board

Advantages: Environmentally friendly and not prone to mold. Bamboo fibers are not easy to fall off, and the surface is not easy to leave knife marks, reducing the risk of hiding food residues. Bamboo cutting boards have poor water absorption and are not easy to mold. Some businesses use this to promote bamboo cutting boards as having antibacterial effects, which is an exaggeration.

Disadvantages: Poor strength. Bamboo cutting boards cannot be used to chop meat. Bamboo cutting boards are made of strips of bamboo, and the thickness and density are relatively low. If they are chopped by gravity, they will easily break.

Metal cutting board

Advantages: Easy to clean. Metal cutting boards are mostly made of 304 stainless steel, which is strong and easy to use, not easy to breed bacteria, and easy to clean.

Disadvantages: Metal knives are not suitable. A good partner for stainless steel cutting boards is ceramic knives, which are most suitable for cutting meat slices. Chopping meat vigorously with a metal knife will leave knife marks on the surface of the cutting board.

Plant fiber cutting board

Advantages: Not easy to crack, not easy to chip, not easy to leave knife marks, no food residue on the cutting board. Because wheat straw, rice straw, rice bran and other materials are mostly ground into powder, added with adhesive, and then pressed into shape under high pressure, the material is dense, easy to dry, and not easy to breed bacteria.

Disadvantages: Adhesives are risky. Wheat straw, rice straw, rice bran, etc. are all biodegradable materials and are very environmentally friendly, but some unscrupulous merchants use poor quality adhesives. When purchasing such cutting boards, you need to pay attention to the composition of the adhesive.

Tips for keeping your cutting board clean

1. Separate raw and cooked food to avoid cross contamination. No matter what material the cutting board is made of, if you need to cut other foods after cutting raw meat, poultry and seafood, you must choose another cutting board to use separately. This is to avoid bacteria remaining on a cutting board from cross-contaminating other foods, especially when the cutting board used to cut raw meat is used to cut cooked food, it is easy to cause foodborne diseases. Therefore, it is best to have two cutting boards.

2. Keep it clean. After using the cutting board, scrub it with a hard brush and clean water to remove the dirt and sawdust. If there is a fishy smell of fish or meat, use rice washing water or detergent with salt, and then wash it with warm water. Do not use boiling water, because the protein in the meat will remain on the cutting board and solidify when it encounters heat, making it difficult to clean. After washing, place it upright in a ventilated place to dry. Do not place it close to the wall or lay it flat, otherwise the other side will not be able to dry and it is easy to breed mold. But do not easily expose a wet cutting board to the sun to prevent it from deforming and affecting its use.

3. Reasonable use. When using a cutting board, you should not use only one end, but rotate it all around to keep the cutting board evenly worn and avoid unevenness on the commonly used side. If unevenness occurs, you can use a plane to plane it flat.

4. Replace it in time. Whether you use a plastic or wooden cutting board, it will age over time. Once the surface of the cutting board starts to become rough and grooves appear, it is difficult to clean thoroughly. Especially when you cut meat, fish, cooked food, and vegetables on the cutting board every day, it is inevitable that some food will remain in the grooves on the surface of the cutting board, which provides an environment for the growth of germs. At this time, you must replace the cutting board with a new one in time.