The truly dirty dozen

No matter what else you hear or read, eating organically where you can (bear with me here, I’ll make it easier) is good for your health.

Think about it. How can an item that’s been bathed in toxic chemicals be okay for you? It goes back to my post about eating food you can pronounce. You wouldn’t put laundry detergent on your food so why do you want to eat other chemicals? Pesticides are designed to kill things.

It’s not actually about dirt; it’s about chemicals that can be poison to your health. Chemicals that seep through to the inside of a fruit or vegetable. Can you wash every last bit of a strawberry? No, you can’t; it’s too porous. Can you wash the part of a banana where the chemicals lay? Yep, you can! Better yet, you can peel away the layer that is most toxic.

And that’s exactly how you make this easier on yourself: Where and when you can, buy organic for items you can’t peel or effectively wash an outer covering that you won’t be eating. Think of the banana vs. strawberry image.

Luckily, there are non-organic fruits and vegetables you can safely buy that happen to be naturally more resistant to pests. This means farmers don’t feel the need to soak them in chemicals to produce more. You may need to have a cheat sheet if the removable, in effect, outer layer rule doesn’t apply. But the list is short on what is still pretty safe, even if non-organic.

This basic list includes: cabbage (the outer leaves are discarded), eggplant (the waxy surface sheds chemicals), asparagus (they grow so quickly that there isn’t much time for insects to attack) and sweet potato (it has a natural defense to pests so chemicals aren’t used).

Also safe (think about how the rule applies here) are: avocados, corn, melons (watermelon and honeydew), cantaloupe, grapefruit, mangoes, kiwi, onions, pineapple and sweet peas you shell.

So, what makes up the dirty dozen you want to avoid? Here’s the list:

Celery, peaches, strawberries, apples, domestic blueberries, nectarines, sweet bell peppers, cherries, potatoes, imported grapes, and spinach, kale and collard greens.

I know organic produce can be more pricey. But, if you eat, for example, non-organic celery, you can be ingesting 67 pesticides with it. What will all that cause in the long run? If it harms your health, the medical costs are going to impact your bank account much more than the price of organic celery.

I know, though, that it’s difficult. In writing this, I realized that a fruit I just discovered and love — white-fleshed nectarines — probably aren’t great to eat. Groan. But I look at, as always, the reasonableness factor. If I have one or two of these once in a while, that’s not as big of deal as if I intend to eat a couple every day. So, I won’t be doing that.

You do what you can when you have the knowledge. You make the best choices given what you need, your challenges, your bank account, the availability near you and so on. But you can’t make those choices if you’re not aware. I hope this information builds on your awareness and understanding.