Should I use a wooden cutting board or a plastic one?

Should I use a wooden cutting board or a plastic one?

Commercially or at home?

 

For home use the jury is still out, some woods have natural antibiotic properties (like brass handles) and have been scientifically proven (for home use) to been cleaner than plastic (which ends up with deep groves that cannot be cleaned)

 

Wood must be avoided at all costs in commercial manufacturing (splinters, clean ability) 

 

There are of course a select few exceptions, but above would be the general rule

Back in the day, I grew up in the restaurant business and the kitchen had a gigantic WOOD cutting board that must have weighed at least 500 pounds and stood on 4 legs.  It got washed and sanitized every couple of hours as needed and steamed out at night.  When the grooves became too deep it was sanded down and then put back into service. If I remember correctly the block itself was a square of about a 3 feet high.  Never once was there an issue with the cutting boards.

 

With that said, in a food factory plastic must be used, which from a personal standpoint I abhor, but from a sanitary standpoint plastic is it.

 

For home, we use wood. 

People usually think that plastic boards are more safe than wooden ones cause wood is a porous surface, but actually plastic boards get a lot of scars from daily use. On wooden ones, the bacteria don't multiply and eventually die off. On plastic boards bacteria got caught in knife grooves that are almost impossible to clean out. I use wooden ones, it's more aesthetic and, as it turned out, safe. It's up to you, at least try using quality boards and change them more often.

I rememmber that wooden boards were very common at the butchery shops and butcher used to salt the wood with  a table salt after the cleaning , it was a kind of a diy sanitazing technique back in a days

The below thread has some discussion on wood use and contains links with further info for anyone interested in the subject

 

https://www.ifsqn.co...tic#entry140058

For me either of the two can be used if its household but most plastic is often recommended for commercial productions.
The important thing is to buy one of good quality and ensure it is properly sanitize. Once the knife grooves begins to appear, its safer to discontinue usage and get a new one.

The science is a bit conflicted, but for the sake of ease-of-audit, Wood is going to be frowned upon, especially if you aren't maintaining it to prevent foreign material (splinters).

 

If you want to avoid an easy argument with many auditors, stick with plastic and get rid of them when they get too cut up. It's not worth the fight.

Hi,

 

Please check link, very interesting

 

https://www.research...ntal_conditions

The answer is... it depends...

 

The science is out.  Logically wood should be bad because it's not a smooth surface to clean but wood also has other interesting properties in that it can effectively draw moisture away from bacteria over time.

 

Plastic, when new is great, easy to clean surface, awesome.  Problem is it quickly becomes scored and difficult to clean.  We think if something is submerged in water, the water has actually reached the bottom of any grooves but this is not necessarily the case and removing any debris from the bottom of those grooves will be really difficult.

 

But... I wouldn't rely on the innate antibacterial nature of wood to be able to cut chicken on it, clean it, then use it to prepare salad.  Some ingredients are just too high in pathogens.  I never use a chopping board to cut chicken at all.  if I want to cut it in some way, I do so in the packaging it was supplied in, then throw it away.  Apart from that, my home (wooden) chopping boards are reserved for vegetables only and the vegetables are always clean enough that there is no visible soil before contact with the chopping board (E coli risk).

 

At work always plastic and replaced very often.