We all know pesticide is being used in fruits and vegetables! Through the EWG's Skin Deep website that I posted about in my previous posting, I went to explore further on EWG main site - http://www.ewg.org/. Scrolling down the website, this catches my attention - EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce! Read up at http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php. Although the context is US, I find it no harm reading it to gain more knowledge in this area, and may serve us a base to guide us in our choice of fruits and vegetables.
On the list of 48 fruits and vegetables tested for pesticide residues - http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/list.php, apples, strawberries and grapes are the top 3 with most pesticide residues! Oops! Time to eat lesser of these fruits? Pineapples, mangoes and papayas seem to be safer choice?
Extract out from the guide, "The European Commission has banned diphenylamine, DPA for short, on fruit raised in the 28 European Union member states and has imposed tight restrictions on imported fruit. DPA, a growth regulator and antioxidant, is applied after harvest to most apples conventionally grown in the U.S. and to some U.S.-grown pears, to prevent the fruit skin from discoloring during months of cold storage." Reading this, I'm thinking if this is the so-called wax that one of my friends was scraping off from an apple before he washed it...
In the guide, there was a section on Highlights of Dirty Dozen 2014 and another section on The Clean Fifteen. I extracted the shocking and notable findings here.
Shocking Findings under Highlights of Dirty Dozen 2014:
- Every sample of imported nectarines and 99 percent of apple samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue.
- The average potato had more pesticides by weight than any other food.
- A single grape sample contained 15 pesticides. Single samples of celery, cherry tomatoes, imported snap peas and strawberries showed 13 different pesticides apiece.
Notable Findings of The Clean Fifteen:
- Avocados were the cleanest: only 1 percent of avocado samples showed any detectable pesticides.
- Some 89 percent of pineapples, 82 percent of kiwi, 80 percent of papayas, 88 percent of mango and 61 percent of cantaloupe had no residues.
- No single fruit sample from the Clean Fifteen™ tested positive for more than 4 types of pesticides.
- Detecting multiple pesticide residues is extremely rare on Clean Fifteen™ vegetables. Only 5.5 percent of Clean Fifteen samples had two or more pesticides.
Oh.. what I really like about this Guide is that it has a section on Pesticides in Baby Food! While my children aren't babies anymore, I still purchase fruit pouches from iherb as they are easy to bring out to serve as snacks for them. Definitely no more peach fruit pouches from onward! I came to this conclusion after reading this paragraph "The European Commission has set an across-the-board limit of no more than 0.01 parts per million of any pesticide in baby food, based on the fact that infants' greater vulnerability to harmful chemicals, compared to older children and adults (European Commission 2006). Some samples of American baby food, particularly applesauce and peaches in baby food tested in 2012 and green beans tested in previous years, exceed the 0.01 legal limit. In contrast to the EU's position, the U.S. has no special rules for pesticide residues in baby food."
Having read about pesticides, I recalled what I learnt during a sharing session conducted by my children's childcare centre. When choosing banana, choose one that has some brown/black spots on the banana skin, do not choose those that look so spotless! What I was told is that those spotless ones are what fruit flies would not even visit... simply because there's too much pesticides on them!
Pay more attention when buying fruits & vegetables next time!
Credits to be given to EWG for the information that I extracted from the Guide. Any other opinion reflected in this post is my own, and not related to EWG.
