Best Type of Wood for Cutting Board: 5 Woods Compared

The best type of wood for cutting board use is hard maple, followed by walnut, cherry and teak. A good board wood is hard enough to resist deep scoring, close-grained so juice and food do not sink into open pores, and free of strong resins or irritant dust. The FDA Food Code, the model code FDA publishes for restaurants and other retail food businesses, makes the same choice: section 4-101.17 bans wood as a food-contact surface except hard maple or an equivalently hard, close-grained wood for cutting boards, cutting blocks, bakers' tables and utensils such as rolling pins and salad bowls.

Side hardness at 12% moisture from the USDA Wood Handbook (Table 5-3b) puts numbers on it:

• Hard (sugar) maple - 1,450 lbf. Fine, closed grain and pale colour; the traditional butcher-block wood.
• Black walnut - 1,010 lbf. Softer, so kinder to knife edges; dark colour hides stains.
• Black cherry - 950 lbf. Fine grain, reddish colour that darkens with age.
• Yellow birch - 1,260 lbf. Fine grain similar to maple; Oldenkamp Cabinets calls birch a budget-friendly alternative.
• Teak - imported; Sonder LA lists 1,155 on the Janka scale and notes its natural oils resist moisture. Teak dust is a known sensitizer for some woodworkers (The Wood Database), a concern for the maker more than the cook.

Sonder LA also lists acacia at 1,750 Janka as a durable, low-cost board wood.

Rule out a wood if it fails any of the FDA's three tests: hard, close-grained, or suitable for food.

• Soft woods. Pine, cedar and other softwoods score deeply; western redcedar has a side hardness of only 350 lbf (USDA), a quarter of hard maple.
• Open-grained or resinous woods. Large open pores hold moisture and food, and resin can flavour food.
• Irritant woods. The Wood Database lists cocobolo, the Dalbergia rosewoods, western red cedar, black walnut and teak among woods that can act as irritants or sensitizers, meaning reactions grow with exposure to the dust. It notes that very few woods are toxic in themselves and that a food-safe finish reduces but does not remove the risk. If anyone in the household has had a reaction to a wood, choose maple and ask a doctor about the allergy.
• Not wood at all. Sonder LA advises against bamboo boards (a grass that is hard on knives) and glass; Wikipedia notes glass and steel damage knives and glass can chip into food.

There is no single healthiest material, and the studies disagree. Wikipedia's summary of the research: one 1994 study found wood more likely to retain bacteria and another 1994 study found the opposite; later work found bacterial populations fell faster on oak and pine than on plastic; and a 2020 study found bacteria survived for less time on wood than on stainless steel, polycarbonate or aluminum. Plastic's advantage is that it can go through a dishwasher and be sanitized with bleach without damage; wood's is that shallow cuts partly close up.

The FDA Food Code's reasoning is practical rather than a verdict: it limits wood because moist foods can make a wood surface deteriorate and become hard to clean. Whatever the material, what matters is a separate board for raw meat, washing with hot soapy water, drying fully, and replacing a board once it is deeply grooved.

End-grain boards stand the wood fibres upright, so the knife slips between them; Sonder LA calls them gentler on knives and more durable, while edge-grain boards cost less and weigh less. Either way, Wikipedia's care advice is the standard one: oil with food-grade mineral oil to prevent warping, never put the board in a dishwasher, and do not leave it soaking, which can crack it or promote mildew. Maple and walnut need oiling more often than oily teak (Sonder LA).

Before oiling a used or secondhand board, check what it is made of. WoodLens can name the likely species from a photo of the end grain or face; our hard maple, black walnut and teak pages show each wood up close.