How Much Pesticide Do Your Favorite Fruits & Veggies Contain?

If your fresh fruit and vegetables seem to have a little extra zing to them, there might be a reason why. That biting peppery taste may just be a little bug killer you consumed with the delicious fruits and vegetables.

If you find yourself cheering for leaders, then go buy some peaches because they were number 1. That doesn’t mean that peaches are the safest or best fruit, quite the contrary. Peaches had the highest score on the ratings.

That means it either had several pesticides, higher concentrations of pesticides, more samples that had pesticides, more samples by percent that had more than one pesticide or the maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample. Because of its high rating, the likelihood is that it excelled in all these areas.

Peaches aren’t the only offenders. Apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines and strawberries ranked right up next to them.

There were two different entries for grapes and the imported grapes scored 66 points or number 10 from the top while domestic grapes fared better with 44 points making them tied with plums and oranges for positions number 21, 22 and 23.

While all this is interesting and in an almost sick way, fun to look up your favorite fruit or vegetable, what is the purpose of the chart? If you worry about pesticides as a health hazard, then it has everything to do with the charts.

Let’s pretend that you change your diet just a bit and instead of an apple a day, recommended by your doctor, you eat an onion a day, not recommended by your spouse. Onions are on the bottom of the chart with only 1 point. There’s very little risk of pesticides in onions, since most onions can take care of themselves in that area.

This change dramatically slices your intake of pesticide by 93 points. This change reduces your exposure to pesticides and the possible health damage they cause.

If you aren’t sure what those adverse health problems are, then perhaps a list is appropriate here.

Remember, children’s bodies are smaller and they have longer to ingest the pesticides so the effect is far more dramatic on them. First, it depends on the type of pesticide but, exposure is linked to:

1. Cancer- Many of the pesticides on the market are found to have carcinogenic effects on the body.

2. Eye, skin and lung irritation-While irritation doesn’t sound so bad, consider the problems from COPD caused by constant lung irritation.

3. Effects on your hormones- These effects vary dramatically but it’s more than impotence because hormones of all kinds control every function of the body.

4. Effects on the Nervous system- When nerve sheathes wear or the wiring goes haywire in your body, your life changes dramatically for the worse.

What can you do to prevent being just another jumbo insect with damage from the pesticide besides giving up your favorite food?

If you’re not positive that you want to eat an onion instead of an apple, the potential damage from pesticides then you might want to shop at the organic section of your grocers market.

Organic farmers don’t use chemical pesticides but instead, use other techniques like companion planting and natural predators to protect their crop from pests. Neither of these leaves anything on the fruits and vegetables that you could consume.