Switching to organic kale because it topsthe 2019 Dirty Dozen listof produce with the most pesticides?
You may want to reconsider.
It turns out the dirty foods are fairly clean, and organic foods arent free of pesticides anyway.
Over 99 percent of the products sampled through PDP had residues below the EPA tolerances.
The implied message is that non-organic produce is somehow risky to your health…but its not.
Theres a problem here.
Their analysis waspublished in the Journal of Toxicology.
Its a pretty big safety margin.
So how many of the Dirty Dozen exceeded this extremely conservative chronic reference dose?
None:
All pesticide exposure estimates were well below established chronic reference doses (RfDs).
So even the dirtiest of the dozen had pesticide levels that are very, very, very low.
It would still be a dozen items long, and the Clean Fifteen would still endorse fifteen others.
Lets stop pretending the EWGs lists tell us anything about what is actually safe in our food.
I can get behind that.
Theres no risk lower than zero, right?
The problem is that the EWGs solutionbuy organic if you are concerned about pesticideswont necessarily reduce your pesticide intake.
Organic farminguses pesticides too.
In fact, here is theNational List of pesticidesapproved for organic certified farms.
Organic pesticidesarent necessarily better for the environmenteither.
This would be a moot point if we could compare the pesticides found on organic and conventional produce.
We just cant say.
What You Should Do
First, keep eating lots of fruits and veggies.
But how can we ensure were getting the lowest possible pesticide residue on our foods?
Im happy to buy from those farms.
Im not arguing against organic food in general.
The organic movement has a lot of good intentions behind it.
The USDA Organic label doesnt reflect intentions, though.
Ask questionsorgrow your own, if you canand forget the Dirty Dozen.
