Myth of cutting boards sliced and diced

I’ve sliced, diced and chopped through more than my share of ingredients over the past decade as a food writer — and my cutting boards bear ugly witness to that.

As a new year exercise over the past week I’ve been taking stock of my kitchen tools and came to a somewhat horrific realization: I’ve been using the same half-dozen or so cutting boards for pretty much the past 10 years. And more of them than I’d like to admit are gnarled with deep scars and stains. And if your kitchen is anything like mine, you probably have a board or two well past its prime.

So why does that matter?

Well, they simply aren’t safe to use from a sanitation perspective.

There’s a good bit of science on cutting board safety and sanitation — and a few persistent myths as well. Most notable is the wood vs. plastic debate.

Common knowledge holds plastic to be safer than wood. Wooden boards generally can’t go in the dishwasher without getting damaged (a warped bamboo board I just tossed in the trash is testament to that). And that means they can be harder to sanitize than plastic boards without the benefit of the dishwasher’s high heat.

But an oft-cited study from University of California, Davis researcher Dean Cliver found wood to have some sanitation advantages. In the test, both wooden and plastic cutting boards were doused with bacteria including E. coli and salmonella — common foodborne bugs that, in the worst cases, can lead to a fatal illness.

But Cliver’s study showed less bacteria on wooden cutting

boards — even older ones with oodles of deep knife cuts — had after they were washed in hot, soapy water with a sponge.

University of North Carolina food safety researcher Ben Chapman said that’s because “hardwoods, like maple, are fine-grained, and the capillary action of those grains pulls down fluid, trapping the bacteria — which are killed off as the board dries after cleaning.”

Cliver’s study found plastic boards with a patchwork of bacteria-trapping grooves (like mine) are nigh impossible to scrub completely clean by hand. And while a hot dishwasher can sanitize them, there’s no guarantee that will get all of bits of food out of those gashes.

If you don’t have a dishwasher and want to make absolutely certain your plastic cutting

boards are clean or you’re working with a wooden board, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a solution. Wash the board as normal, then stir a tablespoon of liquid chlorine bleach into a gallon of water and douse the surface of the board. After that bleach water has sat on the board for a couple minutes, rinse it off with water and let it air dry or pat it dry with a towel.

Regardless of what kind of cutting board you choose to use, this much is clear: “All plastic and wooden cutting boards wear out over time,” according to the USDA. “Once cutting boards become excessively worn or develop hard-to-clean grooves, they should be discarded.”

Hinterhaus Productions / Getty Images Both wood and plastic cutting boards are safe to use if properly cleaned. Both types, however, do wear out over time.

The_burtons / Getty Images If your cutting board has deep gashes and cuts like this, it’s time to replace it.