Dirty Dozen/Clean 15

You may have been hearing about the “Dirty Dozen and Clean 15” for some time and this is why it matters: Pesticides used in crops are naturally poisonous – their role is to kill bacteria and /or insects. That doesn’t mean we as humans are immune to these chemicals. Pesticides have also been linked to diseases such as cancer and hormone disruption. This is not meant to scare you away from buying fresh fruits and vegetables completely but to consider where and how these items are grown.  Certainly fresh produce – real, whole foods, are always better than processed foods. Processed foods have more harmful chemicals and may not even contain real food! Buying organic is ideal, however, it may not be easily accessible or affordable for some. These lists set up by the Environmental Working Group are meant to help with our selection of GROCERY STORE purchases by perhaps focusing on buying the dirty dozen as organics while the clean 15 would be fine to buy non-organically. If you purchase your foods locally at a farmer’s market you may want to speak with the farmer to understand his particular farming practices.

If you do buy the dirty dozen non-organically grown produce, washing with tap water will remove some of the pesticides on the skin (there is no improvement using specially formulated produce washes) but it does not remove any that have entered into the flesh of the fruit of vegetable. If it’s a GMO produce with the pesticide engineered into the DNA, no amount of washing will get rid of it.