Wooden salad bowls are a great choice for your dining room. They are beautiful to look at, very practical and nothing encourages family bonding more than a magnificent wooden salad bowl in the middle of the dining table. But choosing the right one is not always easy. There are many types of wooden bowls available, and if you’re not careful, you could end up with a low-quality one – or worse, one that’s not safe to use. Here is one of the questions to ask yourself before choosing your bowl.
What kind of bowl is safe to use?
Since the late 90s, there have been many scams involving importers of wooden bowls. Many companies and shops use dyeing processes that can be unsanitary and dangerous for you and your family. If you’re not aware of the wood your bowl is made from, you could be getting more than you paid for in the form of unhealthy fillers.
Here’s what you need to know:
Trees that grow in the Philippines, Vietnam, Africa, Thailand and even the southern United States are not suitable for making a good wooden bowl. Due to the climate and high rainfall, these trees grow very quickly, which makes the wood less dense. Which is not good. Some bowls are not made from tree wood at all, but from tropical grasses, bamboo and shrubs. More than often these low density bowls need fillers like glue to keep their shape. It probably goes without saying that glue and most fillers are not food safe and you don’t want them anywhere near your kitchen. If you cannot find information about the type of wood the bowl is made of, our first suggestion is to abandon the idea as soon as possible. However, one quick way to tell if a wooden bowl was not created from natural wood is to place several identical bowls. If the grains in the wood look the same, they are not our Mother Nature’s plan.
What about “faux” wood? Walk into any chain grocery store and you’re likely to even find a wall full of crafted wooden bowls. Of course, these may be cheaper than the real thing, and some do look wooden. The ugly truth is that many of these mass-produced bowls have gone through a multi-step chemical bleaching and staining process to give the appearance of real wood. These processes are not safe and can leach into your food over time. Also, unlike quality wooden bowls, these fakes won’t last very long.
And then there are the ebonized wooden bowls. These bowls have undergone a chemical reaction, which is why they are darker, sometimes even black. It can look pretty cool and some may claim it’s safe, but let’s not buy it. This is just one more form of wood processing that can be toxic. Also, some of these blemishes require fillers and no one tells us what they are. We’re not sure we’d like to know…
You are probably wondering which type of wood is better to avoid when choosing a salad bowl. Click HERE.
If you are interested in which wood is best suited for making wooden boards, read the blog entry HERE.
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