For germs, as for people, some neighbourhoods are safer and more desirable than others. The debate on which cutting board material is least attractive to bacteria has been going on for years and like the germs themselves shows no sign of disappearing.

Not so long ago a friend of mine purchased one of those new silicon cutting boards which have been popping up in stores all over the place. She was immensely proud of the colorful board and the shop assistant had told her that plastics are the cleanest option for food preparation.

H-O-G-W-A-S-H!

Plastic is absolutely discredited as a chopping board material!

Plastic boards are easily scored by knives which leaves little nooks and crannies on an uneven surface for bacteria to hide and multiply.

I found a great review on plastic, timber and marble cutting boards and their germ-friendliness at MSN Health recently. In that experiment wood was a clear winner over plastic and marble cutting boards.

Timber cutting boards have the edge because hard wood boards are too tough to be bothered by knife marks and the capillary effect of wet wood grain sucks bacteria into the board where it is killed as the board dries.

It was interesting that marble, which is really hard, is still not as clean as timber. Why? Because it's strength (a tough, impervious surface) is also weakness.

When a marble board is washed, the bacteria the germs are transported all over board like a water slide and they set up colonies right across the board's surface. The MSN study found too many colonies to count on their sample while for wood, the bacteria aren't spread.

Before you ask, a glass cutting board behaves exactly the same way as marble.

Camphor laurel is like the Sahara for germs and is a great alternative for your chopping board.

• the hard grain means no knife marks;
• the boards are made from a single piece of wood so there is no chance of delamination allowing bacteria to slip into the cracks and multiply
• the naturally anti-bacterial effect of the camphor gives extra protection.

Voila, a grem retardant trifecta!

Alan Waterson, from the Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia did a study into the antibacterial properties of several cutting boards and found camphor laurel beat cedar, plastic and glass hands down.

"Camphor Laurel Timber, as tested here, was the most effective food preparation surface with regard to reducing microbial growth.

"This appears to be a result of the nature of wood in general, & the presence in this particular wood of anti-microbial substances, which are also known to occur naturally in edible products".