Pesticides in Fresh Produce: What's Your Poison?

Let’s face facts: we’re living in a toxic world. During the course of our day-to-day being, we’re constantly bombarded by radiation from a range of sources, inhaling, consuming chemicals and preservatives in our food and even applying them to our bodies (i.e. certain beauty products, sunscreens, etc).

It is my belief that, at this point in human evolution, we’ve polluted the environment to SUCH a degree that it would be a practical impossibility to ‘remove’ all toxins from our systems. However, as health conscious individuals, what we can do is become more educated about the products we’re consuming to help better ‘manage’ the types of substances we’re putting into our bodies.

What Are You Eating?

Who doesn’t love apples? They’re a versatile snack and everybody knows that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’. What if I told you that 93 percent of the apples you eat had traces of two or more pesticides on them? Recently, the Environmental Working Group (a non for profit organisation) released a list of 27 fruits / vegetables which, accoding to their tests contained the highest / lowest pesticide residues. How bad is the damage you ask? Some of the figures reported by the EWG showed -

• Up to 15 different pesticides were detected on a single sample of grapes.
• 78 different pesticides on some samples of lettuce.
• 10 different pesticides on a single sample of cucumber.

Will Washing Foods Help?

Washing or light scrubbing of fruits / veggies does remove a substantial portion of the surface pesticides. However, you cannot remove all of them nor can you remove pesticides that have been incorporated into the produce while it was being grown.

What To Do

Buying true, verifiable, organic produce definitely helps. However, if you can’t incorporate organic foods into your budget, fear not. The EWG also submitted a ‘clean 15’ list of produce that cointains the LEAST amount of pesticides. Sticking to those should help to reduce the impact these nasty chemicals can have on your body.

The Dirty Dozen 

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Sweet Bell Peppers
4. Peaches
5. Strawberries
6. Nectarines – Imported
7. Grapes 
8. Spinach
9. Lettuce
10. Cucumbers
11. Blueberries
12. Potatoes   

The Clean Fifteen 

1. Onions
2. Sweet corn 
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Cabbage
6. Sweet Peas
7. Asparagus 
8. Mangoes
9. Eggplant
10. Kiwi
11. Domestic Cantaloupe
12. Sweet Potatoes 
13. Grapefruit 
14. Watermelon 
15. Mushrooms

Happy Choosing!