Okay, so here’s the deal—we get too many chemicals and pesticides in our diet.  I always wonder about synergy—what happens when all of these hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and other chemical contaminants get all mixed together in our body? 

Well, you can be make choices that reduce the amounts of contaminants that you consume…

We all know that we should wash our fruits and vegetables before we eat them, but even washing them won’t remove all of the pesticides; it will reduce them, however.  

And so you peel your fruits and vegetables when you can?  That’s a no, no, too—those skins and peels have vitamins and nutrients that your body needs.  The best that you can do is to purchase organic products—but we all know that that can be expensive and isn’t always reasonable. 

So what should you do?  Maybe you can buy a few items from the organic section—the fruits and vegetables that have the highest pesticide load; you can reduce a significant amount of pesticides just by picking and choosing products this way.

The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organization, studied thousands of tests for pesticides and came up with a ranking from highest pesticide load to least pesticide load.  You can get the entire list from Food News at EWU, but here is a look at just a few from the highest to lowest pesticide load...  (These are ranked assuming the consumer does wash them before eating them.)

The highest pesticide load:  peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, and lettuce…    

The least pesticide load: mangoes, pineapples, frozen sweet corn, avocados, and onions… 

To see the entire list of 100 items—you can even download a printable version--follow this link to Food News at EWU.