No need to wash cabbage

Ms Xu, a Beijing reader, asked: my mother told me since I was a child that cabbage heart is very clean and can be eaten without washing, but on the Internet, cabbage heart also has pesticide residues, which statement is right? Zhang Fenglan, chief expert of the breeding Department of the vegetable research center of Beijing Academy of agricultural and Forestry Sciences, replied: there is almost no pesticide residue in the heart of cabbage, which can be eaten without washing To explain this problem, we need to find out how cabbage grows In the early stage of Chinese cabbage, the outermost real leaves are grown They are arranged in a disc shape according to certain development angle rules They are technically called "rosette leaves" This part of leaves will be removed by farmers when they harvest them When the cabbage grows to a certain size, that is, when the rosette leaves reach more than 10 pieces, when the temperature drops slowly, it will grow "heart leaves" from the growing point one after another These leaves are growing inward, in a roll shape, which forms the basic outline of cabbage leaf ball After the formation of the outline, cabbage leaf ball is gradually enriched from the inside, which is called "Guanxin" by vegetable farmers According to this growth law, we can know that cabbage heart is the last one to grow and the most tender At the same time, due to the compact growth of cabbage leaves, the leaves in cabbage heart will not contact with external pesticides, dust and other impurities, and it is difficult for pests to enter into cabbage heart Therefore, cabbage heart is the cleanest part of the whole cabbage, which can be eaten without cleaning Of course, if you are not sure, you can simply rinse it and then eat it.