Give these 12 pesticide-heavy vegetables and vegetables an extra rinse

It doesn’t matter where you get your fruit and vegetables, whether it’s a new delivery, the organic aisle in the supermarket or directly from a local farm, they all need a good wash before you eat them.

Between bacterial dangers such as E.Coli, Salmonella and Listeria, cross -contamination, hands of other people and the various chemicals that remain on vegetables in the form of pesticides or protective equipment, no vegetables should avoid a trip to the sink before it enters your mouth. And yes, that includes organic because organic does not mean pesticid -free; It just means no toxic Pesticides, a common misconception that most supermarket shoppers have.

Before you get too much about pesticides in your products, remember that the American Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Program (PDF) has found more than 99% of the sampled food levels that met the safety standards set by the Environmental Protectionsency, where 27% do not have a detectable at all..

In short: some residues are ok, and not all chemicals that are found on food are harmful – you don’t have to panic to wash a handful of fruit and vegetables. For example, a waxy wax is sprayed on apples to replace the natural laundry that replaced during the cleaning process after harvest. Rail quantities Pesticides will usually not have a significant influence on your health, but if you are concerned about the downing of pesticides or other chemicals in which your food is possible, you can follow a better-safe Dan-Sorry approach and wash your products for eating.

Some varieties are more susceptible to persistent particles than others, and to sort the dirtiest products from the non-ZO-Bath, the environmental group, a non-profit for food safety, publishes a list of products that most likely contain pesticides. It is called the dirty dozen, and it is a cheat sheet of which fruit and vegetables you should always wash.

The group analyzed 47,510 samples of 46 fruit and vegetables, tested by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.

The number 1 perpetrator of pesticides in the newest study of the group? Strawberries. The popular berries had more chemicals found on them than any other fruit or vegetables that are included in the sweeping analysis.

Below you will find the 12 foods that most likely contain pesticides – and the 15 foods are the least probably infected.

The dirty dozen: the fruit and vegetables to always wash

Foods that probably contain pesticides, according to FDA and USDA data.

1. Strawberry
2. Spinach
3. Kale, Collard and Mustard green
4. Grapes
5. Peach
6. Pear
7. Nectarines
8. Apples
9. Call and hot peppers
10. Cherry
11. Blueberry
12. Green beans

The dirty dozen is a good indicator that is intended to warn consumers of the fruit and vegetables that need the most to wash thoroughly. Even rinse a quick rinse with water or a spritz Produce washing Helps.

You can also bypass a lot of the potential risk by buying certified organic fruit and vegetables that are free from the use of agricultural pesticides. Knowing which food more often contains pesticides, you can help decide where you can spend that little extra money in organic. As I have learned in an analysis of organic and non -organic prices, they are not as expensive as you might think.

More takeaway restaurants of the dirty dozen study

• More than 95% of the samples From strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines and grapes tested positive for residues of two or more pesticides.
• A total of 209 different pesticides were found on dirty dozen items.
• Of those 209, More than 50 different pesticides were detected on every type of crop on the list, except cherries.
• Kale, collard and mustard greens, as well as hot peppers and peppers, had detected most pesticides of each crop – 103 and 101 pesticides in totalrespectively.

Conversely, the EWG found these 15 fruit and vegetables Felt Probably contain pesticides.

The Clean 15: Fruit and vegetables that you can skip

These are the vegetables and vegetables that the least probably contain pesticides, according to the study:

1. Avocados
2. Sweet corn
3. Pineapple
4. Onions
5. Papaya
6. Sweet peas (frozen)
7. Asparagus
8. Honeydew melon
9. Kiwi
10. Cabbage
11. Watermelon
12. Mushrooms
13. Mango
14. Sweet potatoes
15. Carrot

The clean 15 turned out to have the lowest levels of pesticide contamination over all tested samples, but that does not mean that they are not infected at all by pesticides. It certainly does not mean that the fruits and vegetables that you bring at home are also not infected with bacteria. You would be statistically safer to consume unwashed food of the beautiful 15 than the dirty dozen, but it is still a good rule of thumb to rinse all From your fruit and vegetables before you eat them.

The EWG methodology includes six measures for pesticide pollution. The analysis focuses on which fruit and vegetables are most likely to contain one or more pesticides, but do not measure how much of a pesticide is on a certain piece of products. You can read more about the dirty dozen of the EWG in the published study.

Wash frequently asked questions of vegetables and vegetables