I admit, I usually grocery-shop on autopilot, but the other day, as I reached my hand through a light rain to grab broccolini and cilantro, I wondered: What’s up with the wet veggies? When did vegetables start getting their own weather?
You’ve probably noticed the same thing, or maybe just wondered why grocery-store produce is often gleaming with droplets … as if it were just picked five minutes ago.
As a health reporter, I had so many questions: How come grocery stores keep vegetables damp? Why do veggies need misting, while fruit apparently doesn’t? Is there a downside to buying slightly soggy produce? To get to the bottom of this shopping mystery, I reached out to three experts: a food scientist, a microbiologist and a professor of public health. Here’s what they had to say about the benefits and risks of this retail practice.
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How do grocery stores keep produce moist?
Most grocery stores use a misting system—an automatic sprinkler of sorts that hangs over the produce and rains gentle showers down on the veggies and herbs. It’s a common practice: Up to 70% of grocery chains use automatic misters today, according to the industry publication Produce News.
Smaller markets may manually spritz their veggies, but it’s tricky to give just the right amount of water at the ideal interval, so “it’s generally easier to use an automatic mister,” explains food scientist Bryan Quoc Le, PhD, author of 150 Food Science Questions Answered.
Why do stores spray vegetables with water?
As is the case with many baffling grocery-store practices, there’s more than one explanation. Stores give your future salad a bath because:
Misting keeps vegetables fresh
Fruits and vegetables are largely water. (Bok choy and cucumbers, for instance, are a whopping 96% water, per the USDA.) “Produce can quickly wilt when the ambient moisture drops below 90% to 99%,” Le says. “Misting significantly increases the ambient moisture.” So those showers help those healthy foods last longer.
It makes them look farm-fresh
If you’re starting to suspect misting is one of those grocery-store marketing tactics that trick us into loading more food into our cart, you might be on to something. That dewy sheen serves as a visual cue that basically says: This vegetable is ripe.
In fact, that just-watered appearance “plays on human psychology and human evolution.” We unconsciously connect moist produce to being high quality and more nutritious, Le explains.
Dry produce, on the other hand, is a tough sell. Think about it: When’s the last time you thought, I have to get that shriveled-up zucchini! And oh, look—they have wilted parsley!
It makes the veggies weigh more too
Yep, that’s what else heavier produce means: ca-ching for the store. Now, retailers may not be scheming to pad your grocery bill, but it could be a side effect of misting that they aren’t working hard to fix. (Now that I know this, I just might sneak a paper towel in my bag and pat-dry my greens before checking out.)
What are the downsides to misting produce?
The biggest disadvantage of misting is that it could speed up spoiling. “Wet produce can begin to mold faster,” Le says. We’re talking about vegetables, in particular—stores don’t usually spritz their fruit, for a couple of reasons. Many fruits have a skin or peel that reduces moisture loss. And fruit is more prone to mold or rot if the moisture level is too high.
“Grocers have to walk the line between giving produce enough moisture to stay crisp but not so much that it promotes the growth of bacteria and mold that cause produce to spoil,” says Brian Labus, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s School of Public Health. While that sounds pretty gross, it’s more of a quality worry than a food-safety concern. “The organisms that cause produce to spoil are generally not the ones that make people sick,” he says.
Still, to combat the mold issue, some grocery chains are switching to fog misters. This type of watering technology, which is used in parts of Europe, produces micro-droplets that create humidity without the wetness.
Grocery stores are also experimenting with ways to curb microbial growth in their produce irrigation systems, explains Jason Tetro, a microbiologist and the author of The Germ Code and The Germ File. “Some use an EPA-approved additive that can kill microbes upon contact.” The additive is actually a very low concentration of chlorine, which is safe for human consumption.
Are there any other concerns about misted produce?
Decades ago, there were outbreaks of Legionnaire’s disease—a serious type of bacterial pneumonia—tied to grocery-store misting systems in Spain and the U.S. “A large outbreak in 1989 in Louisiana led to changes in the way we manage these systems,” Labus says. Grocery stores are now required to carefully clean and maintain them, so outbreaks aren’t common, he adds.
How can you tell if your produce was over-misted?
The good news is that you can see signs of spoiling. Bacteria or mold cause discoloration and “makes the produce slimy or mushy,” Labus says. Needless to say, if you pick up a mushy or oozing veg, put it right back on the pile.
But as long as the misted produce looks healthy, it’s perfectly safe to bring it home. “I don’t think twice about purchasing it,” Labus says.
That said, whether you buy your vegetables misted or dry, give them a rinse with tap water when you get home, Tetro says. While the misting may not be a problem, the fact that your veggies might have been handled by people who didn’t properly wash their hands means there’s still a chance for infection. As he puts it: “Always better to be safe than sorry.”
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Sources:
- Brian Labus, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; email interview, July 8, 2025
- Jason Tetro, microbiologist, author of The Germ Code and The Germ Files, and host of the Super Awesome Science Show podcast; email interview, July 8, 2025
- Bryan Quoc Le, PhD, food scientist, food industry consultant and author of 150 Food Science Questions Answered; email interview, July 7, 2025
- Produce Business: “Cutting Through the Fog of Produce Misting”
- USDA: “Nutritive Value of Foods”
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