Some Food For Thought on Earth Day

Perusing the plethora of food available in the grocery store can be a relative gauntlet of choice these days. A little information can go a long way to helping you ‘hedge your bets’ in the produce aisle, as you try to reconcile the sometimes conflicting values of sustainability, price, nutritional value, and taste.

 

Turns out organic apples and conventionally grown grapefruit are two good choices while we wait for more local fruit to grow. My rhubarb is getting bigger by the day, and those scrumptious local strawberries aren’t far off, but if you want to get your five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, chances are you are buying some out-of-season produce from the grocery store.

 

While the Environmental Working Group (and nutritionists, along with me) advocate that you eat produce of any kind rather than eating no produce at all, you can substantially reduce your exposure to pesticides by avoiding the ‘Dirty Dozen’ plus two more veggies that might have pesticides of special concern. If at all possible these potentially ‘dirty’ varieties should be bought organic, or avoided in favor of the ‘Clean 15’ – those that are conventionally grown but up to 98% of samples tested had no pesticide residue, and no single sample had more than 5 different chemicals (some of the ‘dirty’ ones had up to 64 different pesticides in a single sample). And if you’re wondering, all samples were tested after being washed and/or peeled.

 

Two crops that the Working Group added as an addendum to the ‘Dirty Dozen’ - leafy greens (kale & collards greens) and green beans - were due to their testing positive for the presence of organophosphates, a class of insecticides that are toxic to the nervous systems of humans. Thankfully these insecticides are being withdrawn from use, but they are still applied to certain crops and pose serious hazards to health. This is especially true of children exposed to higher levels of organophosphates while in the womb (see Rauch et al. 2012[i] in the resources below). The Working Group also found pesticides in commercial baby food – testing 190 samples each of green beans, pears, and sweet potatoes. While the sweet potatoes had virtually no detectable pesticides, the other two weren’t so hot. Check out the website found in the resources below for further details.

 

The Dirty Dozen + 2

• Apples (98% of samples tested positive for pesticides
• Celery (96% tested positive; 13 different pesticides found in a single sample)
• Sweet bell peppers (15 different pesticides found in a single sample; 88 different pesticides residues found in total; high levels of organophosphates)
• Peaches
• Strawberries (13 different pesticides found in a single sample)
• Nectarines – Imported (100%; highest total weight of pesticides; high levels of organophosphates)
• Grapes (15 different pesticides found in a single sample; 64 different pesticide residues in total)
• Spinach
• Lettuce (78% tested positive)
• Cucumbers (81% tested positive)
• Blueberries - Domestic (13 different pesticides found in a single sample)
• Potatoes (91% tested positive)
• Green Beans (high levels of organophosphates)
• Kale & Collards (high levels of organophosphate

 

 

 

The Clean 15

 

• Onions (98% of samples had no detectible pesticides; no sample had more than one pesticide)
• Sweet corn[ii] (98% of samples had no detectible pesticides; no sample had more than one pesticide)
• Pineapples (More than 90% of samples had no detectible pesticides)
• Avocado (98% of samples had no detectible pesticides)
• Cabbage
• Sweet peas
• Asparagus
• Mangos (78% of samples had no detectible pesticides)
• Eggplant
• Kiwi (75% of samples had no detectible pesticides)
• Cantaloupe – Domestic (60% of samples had no detectible pesticides)
• Sweet potatoes
• Grapefruit
• Watermelon (67% of samples had no detectible pesticides)
• Mushrooms

 

While the Working Group used a number of metrics to determine a compound score of pesticide contamination[iii] in every case, each one was weighted equally to represent the uncertainty inherent in the current knowledge of the effects of pesticide exposure.[iv] They state:

 

The EWG’s Shopper’s Guide™ is not built on a complex assessment of pesticide risks but instead reflects the overall pesticide loads of common fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainties of the risks of pesticide exposure. Since researchers are constantly developing new insights into how pesticides act on living organisms, no one can say that concentrations of pesticides assumed today to be safe are, in fact, harmless.

The Shopper’s Guide™ aims to give consumers confidence that by following EWG’s advice, they can buy foods with consistently lower overall levels of pesticide contamination.

 

While organic produce will always help you limit your pesticide exposure, these fruits and veggies can be expensive compared to conventionally grown varieties – which aren’t all bad according to the ‘Clean 15’. Another way that you can increase the sustainability of your choices is to choose what is local, and what is in season. Both of these traits tend to reduce price, which is always an important value in our food choices. So imagine my surprise when my usual winter fare of organic local apples, and conventional seasonal grapefruit turn out to be two good picks.

 

While you're filling your basket, you can also feel good about those sacks of onions, tempting avocados, and spring asparagus that you don't find in the organic section. If you want to indulge in berries or spinach out of season, look at the freezer aisle. Often these popular foods (along with green beans and stone fruits) can be had a very reasonable prices when bought organically but frozen. And really, these frozen forms will be copacetic with the light steaming, blending or baking that you are planning on doing with these gems anyway – AND you can often find them on sale, and stock up. Now THAT is Very Good Food – good for you, good for the earth.

 

 

 

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[i] Rauch et al. 2012. Association of Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticide Metabolites with Gestational Age and Birth Weight. Environmental Health Perspectives 120(7):1055-1060. Available online at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404666/

[ii] Sweet corn is differentiated from commodity corn grown for use as animal feed or biofuels, which tends to be grown from GMO seeds which are designed to withstand heavy pesticide applications. Some sweet corn for human consumption is also grown from GMO seed – if this is a concern opt for organic varieties, which cannot be grown from GMO seed to meet certification standards.

[iii] Contamination was measured in six different ways: percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides, percent of samples with two or more detectable pesticides, average number of pesticides found on a single sample, average amount (in parts per million) of all pesticides found, maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample, and total number of pesticides found on the commodity. “ For each metric, [The Working Group] ranked each food based on its individual USDA test results, then normalized the scores on a 1-100 scale (with 100 being the highest). To get a food’s final score, [they] added up the six normalized scores from each metric. The Shopper's Guide™ shows a full list of fruits and vegetables in order of these final scores. http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/

[iv]Our goal is to show a range of different measures of pesticide contamination to account for uncertainties in the science. All categories were treated equally; for example, a pesticide linked to cancer is counted the same as a pesticide linked to brain and nervous system toxicity. The likelihood that a person will eat multiple pesticides on a single food is given the same weight as the amounts of the pesticide detected and the percent of the crop on which pesticides were found.