Fruits and Vegetables: purchase Organic groceries It’s not as expensive as it used to be, but it’s still a significant jump in the price of non-organic meat and production. If you’re going to buy some but not all organic, do it wisely.
Fruits and vegetables are more likely to contain pesticides than others, and so buying pesticide-free versions of them will give you more bang for your organic buck and keep more harmful chemicals off your dinner plate.
To help you decide which foods you should buy organic and which you shouldn’t, the food safety nonprofit Environmental Working Group compiles an annual list of foods that contain pesticides called “The Dirty Dozen.
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The No. 1 offender of pesticides in the group’s latest study? Strawberries. These popular red berries have more agricultural chemicals found on them than any other fruit or vegetable included in the study.
According to studies, strawberries are the most likely to contain pesticides.
Fruits and vegetables are billed as some of the healthiest foods, but they are most prone to pesticides, which are used during farming to protect them from invasive animals and diseases. In fact, according to studies, nearly three-quarters of all non-organic produce contains detectable levels of pesticides by the time it reaches your supermarket shelves or grocery delivery order.
Foods that do not have a natural covering or edible skin, such as apples, greens, and berries, are more likely to contain pesticides. Pieces of produce with the skin removed are generally less likely to be contaminated, such as avocados and pineapples.
Below you will find 12 foods most likely to contain pesticides and 15 foods least likely to be contaminated.
The Dirty Dozen
According to FDA and USDA data, food is likely to contain pesticides.
- Strawberries
- parent
- Kale, collard and mustard greens
- Peaches
- of pears
- Amrit
- Apple
- grapes
- Bell and hot pepper
- Cherry
- Blueberry
- Green peas
Strawberries, spinach and kale are foods that you are wise to wash well before eating.
The Dirty Dozen is a good indicator meant to alert consumers to which fruits and vegetables are most in need of thorough washing. A quick rinse with water or a spritz of product wash also helps.
You can also avoid the potential risk by buying certified organic fruits and vegetables that are free from the use of pesticides in farming. Knowing which foods are more likely to contain pesticides can help you decide where to spend that extra buck on organic. And as I learned in analyzing organic and nonorganic prices, they’re not as expensive as you might think.
More takeaways from the Dirty Dozen study
- More than 90% of samples of strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines and grapes tested positive for two or more pesticide residues.
- A total of 210 different pesticides were found on the Dirty Dozen items.
- Of those 210, more than 50 different pesticides were found on every crop type on the list, except for cherries.
- Kale, collard and mustard greens, as well as hot peppers and bell peppers, had the most pesticides detected of any crop — totaling 103 and 101 pesticides, respectively.
In contrast, the EWG found these 15 fruits and vegetables East Likely to contain pesticides.
Clean 15
According to studies, these fruits and vegetables are least likely to contain pesticides:
- Avocados
- Sweet corn
- Pineapple
- onion
- Papaya
- sweet peas (frozen)
- Asparagus
- Honeydew melon
- Kiwi
- Cabbage
- Mushrooms
- Carrie
- Sweet potatoes
- Watermelon
- carrot
The EWG’s methodology includes six steps for pesticide contamination. The analysis focuses on which fruits and vegetables contain one or more pesticides but does not measure the amount of any one pesticide on a given piece of produce. You can read more about EWG’s Dirty Dozen in the study published here.