The man with the apron was washing vegetables by the wayside with detergent

As I was walking through the streets of Jakarta, I saw a man standing by a table out on the side of the road washing vegetables. There were several buckets on the table and the man was wearing an apron. He seemed to be washing vegetables in earnest. As I was casually passing by, I noticed a container in front of him. It was a container of green liquid.

The bright green color of the liquid was probably detergent. The man was washing his vegetables with detergent. In Indonesia, people use detergent to wash vegetables! Vegetables that are supposed to be good for you are washed with detergent. This makes the vegetables no longer good for you. I thought it was a wasteful behavior, but it is not such a strange thing to do.

It used to be common in Japan to wash vegetables with detergent. It was not only to wash the pesticides on the vegetables but also to wash away the eggs of parasites. The first dishwashing detergent in Japan was originally designed to wash all vegetables, fruits, and dishes. Even today, if you look closely at the uses of dishwashing detergents, you'll find that many of them list vegetables and fruits.

It seems that at some point it has become the case that vegetables are not to be washed with detergent. What was common sense will somehow turn out to be insane? I just don't notice it, but there may be other things like that around me.

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