I always watch cooking shows where the chefs sharpen the knives and then immediately go to cutting the vegetables or meat without first rinsing/washing the knife. Wouldn’t microscopic metal shavings be everywhere and get on the food and eventually be eaten?
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There are different kinds of sharpening when you see them run the knife along a metal rod looking thing it’s not meant to shave off metal all that does is make the edge stand up as it’s been slightly bent (the humaneye cant see it but it is). The other type of sharpening is with a stone and does shave off metal. This is usually done with a wet stone, and the blade is cleaned after.
Empty a box of cereal and run a magnet through the dust. You are going to be surprised how much iron you find.
When I was a chef, I would always wipe down my blade with a clean tea towel after sharpening it. All the other chefs I worked with did the same.
That is not, usually, the act of sharpening. It is a honing rod, to realign the wire-edge of the knife.
Honing rods come with a magnetic tip to catch those very shavings.
Most of what you see isn’t “sharpening “ as you’d expect. It’s honing, they’re rubbing their blade on a similar strength metal to straighten the blade thus allowing it to cut more smoothly. They’re not shearing metal off.
Typically they would sharpen in a wet stone. Which does rub fine metal off. But they’d clean the blade afterwards, and that’s not something that regularly happens inside the restaurant.
Steel is made up of carbon and iron and as you stated they are microscopic. Those are two things found in the average persons diet and are necessary.
That being said, most people wipe off their blade after sharpening.
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