With higher levels of cleanliness comes higher levels of risk. Yes our crops and goods are easier to grow and they don’t fail nearly as easily, but when we spray them with pesticides we’re spraying them with something designed to be very good at killing things. It’s not designed for killing us thank god, but there isn’t a poison on the market which is good for us, regardless of who the intended audience might be, e.g. rat poisoning.
The tricky thing comes when you try and remove the poisons and toxins from your diet. Without going 100% organic what can you do? Well, it turns out that some fruit and veg absorb much more of these pesticides than others, meaning that they’re slightly worse for us and more likely to make us unwell. Most at risk are kids who’re smaller than we are. Obvious though that statement is, poisons effect the largest of us the least as there’s simply more body to effects, in kids the dose doesn’t have to be very high at all to have an effect as there’s less body to damage. In this case, fat kids my fare better than thin kids.
Regardless, if you want to try and remove the worst and most potentially toxic foods from your or your children’s diets then avoid the following:
– Celery, thin skin and high water content make this vegetable hard to wash and more likely to draw pesticides into itself.
– Peaches
– Strawberries, again high water content and a pitted skin make them hard to thoroughly wash.
– Spinach and other leafy salad vegetables have such a large surface area that efficiently washing them can be very difficult, making it more likely that they’ll harbour nasty toxins.
Fruits and Vegetables that have thicker skins, are more resistant to pesticides and are easier to wash are known as “The Clean Fifteen.” Dr. Sears says that while this will not always equate to lower levels of pesticides, it is probably okay to buy these in their non-organic form.
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