While the way to a healthier diet is to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, these types of produce are certainly not created equal. Some of them may be consumed whether you buy them frozen or not, while others had to be bought in their organic form-that is, they had to be grown minus any use of pesticide.
The Environmental Working Group has been releasing its annual Dirty Dozen, which refers to fruits and vegetables you should avoid buying non-organically simply because they are the most vulnerable to pesticide residue.
EWG is one of the groups that lobbied for the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act, wherein it compelled the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate pesticides based on their toxicity or level of harm to human health, especially of children and other high-risk individuals.
Although this law eventually forced many businesses engaged in food production and/or distribution to use less-harmful chemicals, a good number of them still end up to some types of produce.
The law also included the Consumer Right to Know protocol, which compelled EPA to print brochures that will be distributed to grocery stores, informing shoppers the risk of consuming pesticides by buying food containing their residues. However, according to EWG, the same agency failed to provide the actual risks.
EPA provides some data on food and pesticides on its website, but it does not enumerate which types of food may be susceptible to such residues.
For EWG, these are the Dirty Dozen (in order of being worst):
- Apples
- Strawberries
- Grapes
- Celery
- Peaches
- Spinach
- Sweet bell peppers
- Imported nectarines
- Cucumbers
- Cherry tomatoes
- Imported snap peas
- Potatoes
Meanwhile, these are deemed the best and therefore may have very little exposure to pesticide:
- Eggplant
- Kiwi
- Papaya
- Mango
- Asparagus
- Onions
- Frozen sweet peas
- Cabbage
- Pineapple
- Sweet Corn
- Avocados
