Too scared to eat my own food

Hi all
this is very silly and i'm very new here, I have been gardening and growing my own food for self sufficiency and environmental reasons since 2020 , I am based in the UK however I find that I have actually developed a tad phobia of eating the food I've grown incase I become ill from improper care, for instance right now I am growing potatoes in compost and "mushroom manure"  but am too scared to eat incase of pathogens, we also have a dog and I am careful but since I am absolutely uncertain if her poop could have gotten into the garden on fruit trees I am very uncertain of eating fruit (even though it doesn't touch the ground ((blackcurrants))  ) I know this is probably very irrational but i'd really love to be cooking with my own food, i also sometimes feel like i'd have to have someone braver than me try them first even though all of what i'm growing mentions that they're edible. I was simply wondering how can i know for certain what i'm growing is definitely safe to be eaten ? how can I avoid getting ill and avoiding things like botulism eating raw veggies ?

any advice or science or even help would be much appreciated as I feel very silly but am also a bit uncertain of if what i'm doing is right
thank you

Scrub the spuds and eat them. If you are that concerned then peel them and dont eat the skins. I grew up on a potato farm we grew in all manner of soil from sand to mud and the fields were spread with uncomposted cow manure and NEVER did any of us our our customers become ill.

You would be hard pressed to find any cases illness derived from potatoes. Wash, peel, rinse and cook and dont worry..

Howdy,

I have a fear of eating "organic" store bought vegies/food.  What I grow always better, in my mind.  

I pee in and around my garden and still eat the strawberries...

If you are prone to phobia: you might want to discuss this with your therapist, we probably can't help.

If you just need a little reassurance: wherever the food in your market is grown, animals shit near it, on it, and in it. It gets rinsed off and everything is fine. The food you grow, unless you're going out of your way to make it dangerous, will be safer than anything you can buy. I bet most people could ask everyone they know if any of them know someone who has ever gotten botulism from fresh veggies, and the answer would be a round of "no"s. Sure, it happens, but it's absurdly rare and you gotta eat something. Even in the world of wild fermentation, where you are soaking your produce in random microbial cultures, essentially no on ever gets sick.

Hello and welcome to Permies, where we're allowed to be silly if we want :P

I'm sorry that you feel you can't eat food you grow. It sounds like you have done so in the past and this is a feeling that has just come on recently?
I have to say that I feel that you might benefit from professional advice on this. The recent years have been hard on people's mental health.

In practical terms however, I tend to feel that plants I have grown will be nutrient dense and good for me. If they are cooked properly then pathogens are going to be destroyed by the cooking process. Uncooked food could carry pathogens. I don't tend to worry too much about this, but I have fenced the dogs out of my food growing area. This is mostly because they like to hunt for "mices" which doesn't do my growing plants much good!

You mention having someone braver than you try them first. Do you have an older relative or friend that might appreciate home grown? Maybe you can invite them round to harvest and cook together? Just a thought.
I hope this helps

I'm just going to jump in here and share some of my own experiences, maybe it'll help.

I'm emetophobic (fear of vomiting).  Because of this, my eating is pretty disordered.  It's pretty well managed right now, but if it gets triggered and I start to spiral... it isn't good.  Even at the best of times I have all kinds of quirks about food that "keep me safe," like cooking and cleaning rituals and a list of forbidden foods that changes whenever the weather does.

For years I wouldn't eat anything from my garden unless it was scrubbed and completely cooked.  Nothing raw whatsoever, ever.  If roots had too many nooks and crannies, off to the compost they went.

But then it changed, and I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it was when my peach tree first fruited.  I washed the peach and peeled the skin, then sliced it up and ate it.  I added that specific food and procedure to my "safe" list.

Another time, I ate peas out of the pod right there in the garden (being extra careful not to let my mouth touch anything on the outside of the pod and not to let my fingers touch the peas.  Since the pod was like the wrapper, the peas inside were "clean."

I had a few lettuces (grown for my parents) in an area safe from the cats using it as a bathroom.  After a rainstorm I actually ate part of a leaf right off a plant.  I don't do that very often, I feel like it's rolling the dice a bit too much (and also I don't really like any kind of green raw).

I've started doing a lot of fermenting, which would have been unthinkable to me 10 years ago.  I look at it as a way to make food "safe," since the acid and good bacteria take care of the bad, and it's very easy to know just by smell when something is wrong.

Anyway, I totally understand the fear.  Symptom of modern marketing, I think.  I can't really give you advice, except to try just a little bit, and then if you're fine, try more.  Botulism is its own thing, and not generally something you have to worry about with fresh foods.

Oh honey. Phobias can be debilitating. You're on the right track with identifying it and admitting it. What S Tonin said is great, do what you can handle and work up. It was nice to read this and see other perspectives. For me personally anything that hasn't been on a store shelf is edible (of course I have to eat from the store, I'm a beginner gardener and nowhere close to producing all my own veg.)-in fact, I took a bite of an unidentified mushroom a couple weeks ago (nothing bad happened, still don't recommend). On the other hand, I offered a young friend a fresh blackberry and he backed away shaking saying he doesn't like wild foods. It was a little horrifying.
Nothing we eat is sterile. Everything has germs, pathogens, dirt and bugs on it.
Produce from the store have the addition of chemicals, preservatives, waxes and yes even artificial dyes. Your lovely garden doesn't have any of that on it. In fact, it has the addition of good germs to help our immune system fight, antidepressant microbes from the soil, enzymes to help our gut flora!
Don't think about your potatoes as potential poison bombs. Think about them growing in the dirt soaking up the minerals and vitamins. Sending out leaves that soak up the sun's rays, chompin on that sweet sweet vitamin d. Think about the bees bumbling around on their merry way, slurping up a lil nectar from the potato blossoms to go make honey out of. Isn't it beautiful? Hopefully it makes your potatoes taste better <3

It's not silly and it's brave of you to admit it. We're trained from a young age to be germ phobic, told things are dirty, don't touch, don't eat, etc.

My husband, who is on the autistic spectrum, has the same issue about eating home grown food. For him, if it doesn't come from the supermarket wrapped in plastic, it's not food. The reality is that the food you've grown and the food I've grown will be far healthier and cleaner than anything we could buy in the shops.

Be gentle with yourself, take it slowly, decide on what it would take for you to feel "safe" to eat something you grew, but try not to let that turn into a ritual. Work toward doing only the minimum required processing for safety. Washed, peeled, and cooked potatoes can't contain any disease-causing organisms - ten minutes of boiling will eliminate any bad bugs, even botulism toxin and anything in dog poop.

Botulism can't be a problem with fresh raw food, either. It's anaerobic, which means the spores can only multiply and produces the toxins that cause illness in conditions where there's no oxygen, for example a pot of stew left to cool on the stove overnight, or in a bottle of improperly preserved food. Even that could be made safe by ten good minutes of boiling which will destroy the toxins. It won't destroy the spores, but the normal defences in our digestive systems like our stomach acid neutralise any spores we might eat. Rinsing fresh food in water before eating it is enough to be safe.

The chance of getting any foodborne illness from home grown food is very low. I hope you're able too enjoy the food you grow!

thank you all so so much, i totally understand how silly and it is definitely irrational and unusual to most, I appreciate everyones comments and I'm so happy to feel welcome here ! S tobins response definitely resonates with how i feel maybe I should just take tiny bites and go from there, but I was also wondering on the side of safety, can dog poop affect the fruit of a plant if the fruit is off of the ground? would it be safe to just grab a handful and take a bite ?

I guess it's because I come from a family that aren't in the slightest gardeners nor are they adventurous to try anything not from a shop ! unfortunately it's just me trying to do the right thing in the world growing food for self sufficiency and trying to help the bees

thanks all
- Ryan

In the 60's and 70's my Grandfather (and actually all people in our Village) used his septic tank in the garden as fertilizer for growing all of his veggies.

The liquid manure goes into the soil and the microlife converts it to nitrates and food for the plants, that's the biological lifecycle..
The grow beds got prepared in autumn and in spring was seeding and planting time.

Today human manure isn't allowed commercially and so people buy fertilizer from cow, pig and chicken but it doesn't make a difference.
The plants use not the poop, they use what mother nature makes out of it...

It is sure something else if you use pollutants and chemical waste, but whatever nature produces you put in it makes your plants grow bio...  

I feel your pain! I struggle with similar anxieties when foraging food - I can be 100% confident about my identification and yet, as soon as I've eaten something, I start to doubt myself and worry that I have potentially poisoned myself and my friends or family. The reality is that I never have.

I have found it helpful to, gently, remind myself that I have never poisoned anyone and that I forage for a reason (well, several: I enjoy it, it's healthy, and it's sustainable). Over time, as I forage a particular plant over and over, I find the anxiety surrounding it abates and I can enjoy the process more.

Perhaps, taking a similar approach, you can consider the positives around growing your own food and remind yourself, each time you eat it, that you haven't become unwell - I would imagine, quite the opposite, that it is nourishing your body and you are becoming healthier!

My approach to eating soil is that it feels like a little vaccine. Each time I eat a little, by mistake or laziness (not scrubbing perfectly), I ingest some bacteria and my body learns to live with them or to deal with them. The beneficial microbes and minerals in the soil and on the skin of the vegetables will nourish me. The pathogenic microbes will teach my body to better defend itself and improve my immune system.

Best of luck with your journey

Mr Bails wrote:  can dog poop affect the fruit of a plant if the fruit is off of the ground? would it be safe to just grab a handful and take a bite ?
- Ryan

Ryan, this is a very good question and I went to look for an answer. I am no expert and this is just from a quick scan of the research, but it turns out it's one that's been studied quite a bit, because of occasional illness outbreaks due to E. coli contaminated commercially grown produce. These events are less likely to occur with homegrown food! Food safety researchers needed an answer to the question whether the contamination was on the outside of the spinach leaves or the strawberries -- low growing plants that could easily be splashed with contaminated water or pooed on by passing animals,  in which case good washing was enough -- or had the bacteria gotten inside the plant by migrating up from contaminated soil? It's known that plants have "good" bacteria in them, but what about disease-causing pathogens?

Researchers used specially tagged bacteria and viruses, flooded the plant's growing medium with them, and then checked if any ended up in the leaves or fruits. None did. Many studies found the same. Though plants can take up bacteria through the roots, they have a strong immune system too, recognise good bugs from bad bugs, and healthy plants don't let pathogens through. The exception that seems able to get into fruit and leaves is certain viruses, in hydroponically grown crops but not soil grown crops. Soil bacteria and fungi also limit the activity of pathogens to keep the soil healthy. The other place it was shown bacteria and viruses could get in was after harvest - the cut ends of leafy greens or any damage to the surface of the produce. Another reason homegrown is healthier - we eat it sooner!

If the plant is healthy and the fruit is intact and high enough off the ground not to be splashed, it should be totally safe to  just grab and eat. Even low growing greens or fruits are very, very, unlikely to be contaminated enough to make a normally healthy person ill. The studies I read also found no evidence that pathogens in the soil get inside root crops like potatoes or carrots.

I am so glad you came here and posted about your worries. It's great that you are identifying them and looking to work through them.

I've got OCD and anxiety and have definitely suffered from similar fears about my garden food, plus a lot of food allergies so food makes me nervous sometimes. One thing that has helped me is giving the produce away to people who don't have the same fears. Watching someone else eat it helps me because I know in my brain that the risks are very low and my own home grown food is healthier and safer that anything from the store.

Then the other thing I do is something I've learned about my OCD which is allowing myself to embrace uncertainty and letting myself be uncomfortable and eating it anyway. Every thing in life has some measure of uncertainty and risk and so reminding myself of that and being ok with feeling uncomfortable and the funny thing is that eventually I start to feel more comfortable with it.

Hello,
I have the opposite problem. I try too many wild things and it just comes as an afterthought that it could have been poisonous.
Normally, if the plant is toxic it tastes bad, but boiling fixes that, in most occasions.
About pathogens, yes, I suppose that if your doggy is ill and he defecates on your gardening beds, some pathogens may be hanging there. That's why green raw leafs are recommended to be washed in alkaline water (if someone knows a non toxic method, please let me know). That's if you are going to eat them raw. Cooking kills everything except heavy metals and radiation.
Anyways, an intoxication is usually resolved in some vomits and feeling ill for one or two days

Against botulism, read carefully the instructions on how to preserve food with a pressure canner. This is a real threat if you are carefree.

Noah I'm certainly no expert. A couple of my adult kids have phobias ( not the same as yours) the things I have seen is my kids know there phobia isn't warranted, but they can't help but feel the way they feel. So I'm thinking that you got a lot of great advice, but when it comes down to it. Will it help?  I imagine there are a lot of veraieables here.  My thinking is apply the advice you have gotten from the amazing people here on permies. If it was me I would also create barriers. I might get some chicken wire and put it around my trees, so I don't have to worry about the dog doing it's business in a place I grow food, or fence off a place for the dog when I'm not with it.  Also if manure bothers you don't use it.  There's lots of amazing organic fertilizers in this world that aren't from manure.  Alfalfa meal, kelp, comfrey,  worm castings. I could go on and on. If it was me I might go this route. Yes home grown food is so much healthier to eat, but I feel it should be a enjoyable too. I find peace and joy in my garden. If a few barriers, and different fertilizer can help you enjoy growing and eating what you grow, then that's what I would do.  Good luck. I hope you find a way to enjoy what you grow.

I certainly empathize with you! I've had a lot of unknowns that caused me fear, including when I started growing food. Not true phobia, but fears of the unknown. Like darkness goes before light, fear lives out there ahead of our knowledge. If you have specific worries or fears, you can take steps to address them, like keeping the dog out of the garden or finding preparation methods that are sure to eliminate what you fear might make you sick. A phobia might be a different thing that requires a different strategy to manage.

One thing that has been very helpful for me is learning about food science, and food preservation techniques. I know that it is truly rare to get sick from your own garden, especially compared to food from the "standard" supply chain. And I have really come to love natural fermentation! There are wild, good bacteria and yeasts living on plants that help protect us from the harmful ones, and can be harnessed to our benefit. None of the bad organisms to worry about can survive in lactic acid.

I wish you the best of luck with working through your fears. I don't know what's best but I wanted to offer my experience, in case it might be of help. Here's to hoping you can grow and enjoy lots of healthy, delicious food!

If you cook/boil/fry your produce that you grew, all the microbes/worms/mold/etc are dead and it is safe to eat.
If you didn't wash your hand properly after using the bathroom and ate an apple, because its your own germs you would be perfectly fine. If it is was my shitty hands that touched your apple you would probably get sick.

If you are worried that your very own dog licked the kale outside, I have a feeling that said dog has already liked your face/mouth/hands and you are fine, again its microbes that you are already innoculated against.

So yeah my simple solution would be to cook everything before you eat it. Maybe buy a ozone machine to make your own ozonated water and then dip your fruits in it to kill all the microbes.


When I was a young lad in the tropics I was in a mango tree and eating mangoes all day long. About half way into a mango I look down and I saw a fat juicy worm wiggling. Then I notice that the mango had alot of black worm tracks in it and I thought, I must have eaten all the other worms in this mango. Then after that day I never ate another mango. If I took a bite out of a mango I would vomit. Even though I had no problem eating say an apricot that had a worm in it. I would just flick the worm off or eat around the worm in the apricot. I just couldn't do it with mangoes after that day. Maybe about a decade later I was able to start eating just one cultivar of mangoes and it had to be partially ripe. I have made some progress, because now I can tolerate stuff with artifical mango juice in it.

if your worried this season, cook the tar out of anything you suspect, rolling boil for 3 or 4 minutes kills just about any and all nasties. true compost will heat up in the pile and kill most all pasthgogens.if it still smells like manure its probably not composed all the way done.
just my thoughts but I'm not an expert just a hobbiest

I was born missing half my immune system, so I feel your pain! I have been hospitalized with e Coli. I live in a suburban area and and I wasn't sure about eating fruit from my mulberry tree or about growing a garden in my back yard. I have an older house with leaky sewer pipes. I got conflicting information about eating the mulberries. My local extension service told me my garden would be too close to the sewer lines to be safe for me. Plus the abundant pesticides and herbicides my neighbors use. Then a friend came to the rescue. She made jam out of the mulberries for me in exchange for being able to come over and pick mulberries.  Problem solved. No e Coli after cooking. As for the garden, a friend suggested raised beds with landscape fabric underneath to keep the roots from going deep into the soil. As long as I grow vegetables I will cook, no problem there. I would also like to grow some things I will eat raw in pots. Blueberries,  tomatoes, herbs, etc.