Pesticide Content of certain Fruit and Vegetables ~ EWG

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit consumer advocate group composed of professionals in various areas, e.g., scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers, and computer programmers, bound together to expose threats to our health and the environment and to find solutions. One of the documents that this organization has put together is “The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce”. In this report, the EWG ranked pesticide contamination for forty-seven popular fruits and vegetables based on an analysis of more than 100,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted from 1992 to 2001 by the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Contamination was measured in six different ways, and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.*

Following is a link to the 2019 guide to the dirtiest and cleanest foods https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php.

So what does this mean for the average consumer who is concerned about their health and that of their family? Simply put ~ If a consumer wants to purchase a food product that is on the Dirty list, they SHOULD buy organic. If they cannot find organic, then you can choose local for optimal nutritional value or maybe skip the item altogether. If the consumer wants to a buy a food product that is on the Clean list, organic is always best but they shouldn’t feel like they have to buy organic as these items have little to no pesticides. Feel free to print this document or save it to your phone to take the guesswork out of grocery shopping.

For further information on this or if you have any questions, please contact me at Tammy@myinnerself.ca or 1+416.428.4661.

~ Tammy

*Murray, M., Pizzorno, J., Pizzorno, L. (2005) “Healing Foods” New York: Atria Books (p783)