this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Woodworking

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The Best Food-Safe Finish May Be None At All - Fine Woodworking Article (www.finewoodworking.com)
submitted 2 days ago by captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works to c/woodworking@lemmy.ca
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Conventional wisdom regarding finishing cutting boards and other food prep surfaces is to coat them heavily with mineral oil and/or a food safe paste wax to "seal" and/or "condition" them. Seri Robinson asserts otherwise, her research has shown that any finish applied to wood decreases its natural anti-microbial properties.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

I'm going to hypothesize here that bamboo works similarly to wood in the "wicks water and bacteria in, bacteria get stuck, water evaporates out desiccating bacteria to death" mechanism. The issue I see is the whole "glue joints are bad" thing from the article. Because bamboo grows in hollow tubes, there's no such thing as 12/4 bamboo, you have to glue up a bunch of tiny pieces, so there are lots of glue joints.