Hi.
I am a food service worker and i ofter prepare tomatos for our service.
I have been searching for anything talking about weather or not you should remove the leaves of a tomato stem before washing it in a food safe sani bath. By bath i mean that the tomato is submergerd.
My concern is that because the some tomato leaves sit against the tomato and/or are curled around each other, the sanitizer might not make it into all the tiny places, and then when you pick off the stem the bacteria could transfer to you fingers, and then back onto the tomato. However, anything I have been able to search on the internet makes no mention of this risk. Every picture of a tomato being washed, does have the leaves still attached. Is there a better reason to leave them on?
Does anyone have any insight?