Organic Produce – Where Your Money is Best Spent
The reasons for buying organic produce are fairly well known now. No chemical pesticides or fertilizers, no genetically modified ingredients, and sustainable farming practices. Well, at least that’s what organic is supposed to mean. Whether or not this holds up to reality is another discussion for another day.
We also know that most of the time organic produce is more expensive than other produce. We’d all love to buy 100% organic produce, but for many reasons that may not be practical. So as health conscious consumers we have to know where it’s most important to spend our hard earned dollars, or at least what foods we might want to favor over others.
Fortunately for us, the Environmental Working Group has studied a large variety of produce to get a feel for what items tend to have the biggest toxic load. Here are the highlights of what they’ve found:
Worst Ranked Produce (biggest load of pesticides)
- Peaches
- Apples
- Sweet Bell Peppers
- Celery
- Nectarines
- Strawberries
Best Ranked Produce (least amount of pesticides)
- Onions
- Avocado
- Sweet Corn (frozen)
- Pineapples
- Mango
- Sweet Peas (frozen)
If you’d like to see the full list of all 45 items tested, or to see the actual numbers they came up with, click here.