A video recently surfaced showing vegetable vendors spraying water on their produce—using their mouths instead of sprayers. It was not a sight of ingenuity but of utter disregard for hygiene. To spit on the very food that people will bring home to their families is nothing short of alarming.
When one sees carrots, eggplants, and leafy greens glistening with moisture at the market, the first thought is freshness. But after that video, one cannot help but ask: whose breath, whose saliva coats those vegetables? Freshness quickly loses its charm when it dawns on us that the dew-like mist might be droplets from a vendor’s lungs. Suddenly, what was meant to entice becomes a repulsive image of contamination.
Indeed, these vendors are merely trying to keep their goods appealing. Vegetables wilt quickly under the tropical heat, and a dried bunch of pechay will not sell as well as one that looks freshly plucked. Yet their choice of method—substituting a spray bottle with their mouths—is more than just cutting corners. It is a careless gamble with public health. If even one of them carries a communicable disease, every unsuspecting buyer becomes a potential victim.
Diseases do not announce themselves. Coughs can be hidden, infections can be invisible, and carriers may appear perfectly healthy. This is precisely why such practices are dangerous. Saliva is a bodily fluid, and science has long established its role in transmitting illnesses. To pretend that blowing or spraying with the mouth is harmless is to mock common sense itself.
One cannot help but reflect on the golden rule that should guide every human interaction: do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you. Would any of these vendors willingly eat food misted with another person’s saliva? Would they serve such to their own children? It is the most basic appeal to conscience, yet it seems drowned out by the daily desperation of eking out a living.
Some might argue that poverty drives such behavior. Indeed, sprayers cost money, and every peso counts when margins are thin. But cleanliness is not a privilege of the rich; it is a duty that transcends class. A spray bottle costs less than the shame of being exposed to such a degrading practice, and certainly less than the cost of someone falling ill. Sometimes, common sense is cheaper than stinginess.
What makes the matter worse is the silence around it. Buyers walk past, either unaware of the practice or unwilling to confront it. Authorities turn a blind eye, perhaps dismissing it as too trivial a concern compared to larger issues. Yet this is how neglect festers: little things that appear harmless pile up until they form a culture of carelessness, where standards collapse and lives are risked in the name of convenience.
This practice must stop, and it will only stop if people speak up. Information drives change; awareness pushes behavior. Vendors must be told, firmly but patiently, that such shortcuts harm more than they help. Communities must step in to remind them that vegetables symbolize nourishment and life, not contamination. In the end, all it takes is a little conscience, a little common sense, and the humility to accept correction for the sake of the public’s health.
