Know Your Pesticides (and GMOs)

“... children are much more sensitive and vulnerable to chemicals than adults are.”
― Dr. Philip Landrigan, MD

Are you purchasing produce that is making your healthy or sick? If you are still eating conventional produce, please consider the following:

• pesticides are known to accumulate in the body over time
• pesticides tend to accumulate in the fat tissue of the body, such as breasts and prostate glands, which can affect healthy tissue in these areas
• studies have linked the amount of pesticides eaten to emotional stability

You may consider eating organic to be more expensive, but in the long run you are saving much more in health problems and future medical bills. 

Step 1

The first thing I recommend to my clients is to remove genetically (GM) modified foods from their diet. Not only are GM fruits and vegetables grown with the highest amount of pesticides/ herbicides, they have also been genetically altered so that your body can react to them in a negative way.

The list of GM foods currently includes: corn, soy, sugar beets (and the sugar made from them), canola, cotton (cotton seed oil), alfalfa, zucchini and yellow squash, and Hawaiian papaya. The list now includes GMO salmon too!

Since these foods are genetically engineered to withstand higher concentrations of pesticides, it is virtually impossible to wash off the residue. The chemicals are in the soil and are inherent to the plant itself. The produce can also be coated with a variety of chemicals added after harvest as explained here.

These same chemicals create havoc in our bodies and in the animals that eat it. To learn more about GM foods and how to shop for non-GMO foods, you can go to my previous blog articles. You will want to stay way from meat and eggs derived from animals that eat GMOs too.

Step 2

The next step would be to buy only organic produce.You can tell if a fruit or vegetable is organic by looking at the number on the label. Conventionally grown produce always has a 4-digit number in the 3000 or 4000 range. Organic produce, on the other hand, is coded with a 5-digit number that always starts with the number 8.

If you are not ready to fully commit to buying everything organic, you can refer to EWG’s (Environmental Working Group) food lists to help you determine the most important ones to purchase organic. Some are grown with many more pesticides than others.

Use the links below to see EWG’s most current lists:

Dirty Dozen – A list of the top 12 fruits and vegetables that are grown with a high concentration of pesticides. Definitely the produce you want to buy organic at all times.

Clean Fifteen – A list of the top 15 fruits and vegetables grown with the least amount of pesticides. If you are going to buy conventional produce, these are the ones that are the safest.

Stay away from conventional produce on the Dirty Dozen list, making sure you are purchasing organic when ever possible. Use the Clean 15 list to know which conventionally-grown fruits and veggies you can feel better about purchasing non-organic. If you want to learn more about pesticides, a good sources is whatsonmyfood.org.

Step 3

The third step takes it to another level. Unfortunately, as our food system gets worse, you need to stay educated and be more discerning about the foods you purchase and consume. Even if a food is considered organic, for example, it can still have questionable coatings. Gene editing is another food technology that goes way beyond GMOs. When you are ready to go to the next step, see this article for more information.

Farmer's markets and Amish communities are good sources of more naturally grown foods. This article will give you some additional pointers. Eventually, you may want to consider starting you own garden to grow your own favorite items.