Although organic food has made its way into many homes today, it is still not easy to go all organic (whether it is because of difficult access to certain products or simply a budget issue).
When buying produce, it would be very helpful to know which organic foods should be the priority. This would let us know when it’s really worth it to make an extra effort to go organic for a certain vegetable, or if we really should reorganize our priorities when it comes to our organic food budget.
The American organization EWG (Environmental Working Group) analyzed thousands of samples of 48 fruits and vegetables from conventional farming to count the residual pesticides. From that analysis, EWG created two lists: the “clean fifteen” and the “dirty dozen”.
The first list is that of the 15 foods where the least amount of pesticides were found. What does that mean? It indicates that, if you cannot get an organic version of these foods, you could consume their conventional version without much danger to your health. Here they are, starting with the cleanest:
- avocado,
- sweet corn,
- pineapple,
- cabbage,
- frozen peas,
- onion,
- asparagus,
- mango,
- papaya,
- kiwi,
- eggplant,
- grapefruit,
- cantaloupe,
- cauliflower,
- sweet potato.
The other list is that of the 12 foods where they found the highest concentration of pesticides. Starting with the most pollutants:
- apple,
- peach,
- nectarine,
- strawberry,
- grapes,
- celery,
- spinach,
- bell pepper,
- cucumber,
- cherry tomatoes,
- snap peas,
- potatoes.
In addition to the latter list, EWG notes 3 foods that are out of the scope of the tests. These foods do not contain a large number of pollutants but the pesticides found in them can be very dangerous to the human nervous system: kale, collard greens and hot peppers.
Do you intend to go all organic? Did one of these foods surprise you?
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