Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Why I Buy Organic Produce... Sometimes

I would love for all the produce I buy to be organic. The term organic is used by the USDA's National Organic Program to certify food that is produced without synthetic chemicals or fertilizers, genetic engineering, radiation or sewage sludge. I prefer for everything my family eats to be free of pesticides and without genetic engineering.

source: treehugger

I've got 4 main reasons why I prefer to buy organic:

Higher levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
More flavor
Lower levels of pesticides
Better for the Earth- environmental preservation

I learned a few years ago that different fruits and vegetables have different amounts of pesticide on and in them. I prioritize what produce to buy (and grow) organic based on the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15 lists from the Environmental Working Group (EWG.org). The Dirty Dozen is a list of the twelve dirtiest fruits and vegetables and the Clean 15 is a list of produce least likely to test positive for pesticides based on the "Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce".

EWG reviewed 51,000 tests for pesticides that the USDA and FDA conducted from 2000 to 2009 on 53 popular fruits and vegetables. After analyzing these tests EWG ranked the produce on overall risk of pesticide exposure so shoppers could buy fruits and vegetables with consistently lower overall levels of pesticide contamination.

I don't just look at the Dirty Dozen list but also the Clean 15 list to help me decide what to buy organic. If you choose to eat 5 servings of produce a day from EWG's Clean 15 rather than the Dirty Dozen, you can lower the volume of pesticide you consume daily by 92 percent, according to EWG calculations. Eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables is MUCH healthier than eating no produce at all.

It's just too expensive for me to buy all organic produce. Since I know which fruits and vegetables contain less pesticides I choose to buy everything from the Clean 15 conventional instead of organic.

Here's the list I use to help me determine when I want to spent more money on organic and when not to.