Food Safe Wood
Every now and then I get a question from someone skeptical about the food safeness of raw wood. Either they’re unaccustomed to the idea of wooden utensils and vessels or they’re under the impression that wood needs something slapping on it to make it food safe.
Pretty much any raw wood is perfectly fine to plonk your food on. To help reassure the unbelievers, I’m going to summarize the findings of a scientific paper: Microbial Safety of Wood in Contact with Food: A Review It’s a 13,000 word paper, a bit of a slog to get through. If you want to read it in full, feel free. It looks into the findings of 86 scientific papers that study what happens when wood and food come into contact.
I’ll be focusing mostly on the finding that relate more to use of wood in the home. The article looks into wood’s use in food sectors such as the transportation and production of cheese, wine, seafood and fruits. If you’re interested in why wood is good for cheese making, feel free to read the article!
Here are what I consider to be the key findings:
To date (the article was published in 2016), wood in contact with food has not been found responsible for any food‐borne outbreak.
Even though wood is porous and absorbs liquids, there is no scientific evidence that microorganisms trapped within the cavities of wooden surfaces are likely to be transferred to the surface again.
Wood can contain assorted antimicrobial compounds. This varies between tree species and will inhibit different microorganisms to greater or lesser extents.
Shocker, you have to wash wooden surfaces to keep them clean. Normal hot water, scrubbing with dish soap and rinsing is fine.
The hygiene of wood surfaces depends mostly on the moisture content of wood. Dry wood causes a drastic reduction in living microorganisms, while survival is greater on wood that is wet or covered with organic matter.
Certain bacteria can’t survive as long on wood as they can on plastic, stainless steel or ceramic surfaces.
It was hypothesized that smooth surfaces could maintain high moisture content and favor the survival of microoganisms. Porous surfaces may trap and make unavailable liquid, so the moisture content on the wooden surface decreases and becomes an unfavorable environment for the survival of microorganisms.
Wood’s structure generates surface cavities that can trap bacteria in a state unfavorable for their survival, so bacterial growth is extremely limited.
There you have it. So long are you keep the surface clean and dry, wood is great for direct contact with food. No need for any coatings or coverings. If for aesthetic reasons you do want to apply a finish, you can find my recommendations here.
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