This weeks Topic of the Week ^[1]

The Environmental Working Group ^[2] (EWG), just released their Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce. In it they rate the pesticide levels in common fruits and vegetables. (You may recognize them as the group behind Skin Deep: The Cosmetics Database ^[3], which I have posted on my website ^[4]. 

In an ideal world we would all be eating organic fruits and vegetables, however that can be expensive. So EWG came up with the “Clean 15”. Here is what they have to say:

The Clean Fifteen^™

The vegetables least likely to test positive for pesticides are onions, sweet corn, asparagus, sweet peas, eggplant, cabbage, sweet potatoes and mushrooms.

• Asparagus, sweet corn and onions had no detectable pesticide residues on 90 percent or more of samples.
• More than four-fifths of cabbage samples (81.8 percent)  had no detectible pesticides, followed by sweet peas (77.1 percent) and eggplant (75.4 percent).
• Multiple pesticide residues are extremely rare on vegetables low in overall contamination. No samples of onions and corn had more than one pesticide. Less than 6 percent of sweet potato samples had multiple pesticides.
• Of the low-pesticide vegetables, no single sample had more than 5 different chemicals.

The fruits least likely to test positive for pesticide residues are pineapples, avocados, mangoes, domestic cantaloupe, kiwi, watermelon and grapefruit.

• Fewer than 10 percent of pineapple, mango, and avocado samples showed detectable pesticides, and fewer than one percent of samples had more than one pesticide residue.
• Nearly 55 percent of grapefruit had detectable pesticides but only 17.5 percent of samples contained more than one residue. Watermelon had residues on 28.1 percent of samples, and 9.6 percent had multiple pesticide residues.

Here is the list with the safest first:

1. Onions
2. Sweet Corn
3. Pineapple
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet Peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Cantaloupe (grown in USA only)
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet Potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

To read their full report, go to www.ewg.org/foodnews/ ^[5]

Fifteen fruits and vegetables that don’t need to be organic.