Is The Produce You Eat Covered In Pesticides?
By Anthony Todd in Food on Jun 19, 2012 3:20PM
Even if you're not willing or able to make the switch to organics, not all produce items at your local grocery store are created equal when it comes to pesticides. Much of the food that you buy, even after washing, is still covered in potentially carcinogenic chemicals. Even organic and local advocates like us realize that it's not feasible for most people to eat organic produce every minute of every day, at least not given the current state of American agriculture. The Environmental Working Group has released a guide designed to help you decide which produce items are important to buy in the organic section, and the results might surprise you.
The EWG report includes two lists, the "Clean 15" and the "Dirty Dozen." Lots of different factors come into play here, including whether or not the produce item has edible leaves or a peel and the normal growing practices for the item. For the Dirty Dozen, the advice is to buy organic.
The worst offender? Apples, which are notorious for being sprayed with carcinogenic and mutagenic pesticides. Unpeeled fruits make up the bulk of this list, with peaches, strawberries, grapes, blueberries and nectarines also on the Dirty Dozen. It gets worse—there were 15 different pesticides detected on a single sample of grapes, every sample of nectarines tested positive for pesticides and 98 percent of apples tested positive. Also on the dirty list? Leafy greens like lettuce, spinach and super-trendy kale. In our opinion, it's worth buying these fruits and salad staples at your local farmers market.
The Clean 15 is topped by onions and sweet corn, and includes lots of tropicals like avocado, pineapples, mangoes and kiwis that are difficult to buy locally: a convenient coincidence. There's also a complete list of 45 common produce items and how they all rank.
You can print out the whole list to carry around in your wallet. If you're interested, the methodology of the survey is available as well.