The dirty ten
Did you know over 20 million children between 1-5 years old ingest at least 8 pesticides daily. Another study found 16 different pesticides in 8 baby food products and some of the most popular fruits and vegetables in the UK are covered in over 100 pesticides!
When shopping on a budget but wanting to do the best for you and your family, it is sometimes difficult to balance things out and know what is more important so this handy chart I made is a brilliant reminder.
It is a reminder of the fruit and veg that is most important to buy organic, with the highest pesticides.
We always try to buy as much organic food as possible, but we also know how sometimes there is rent and bills to pay. You have to make the best decision for your family at the time. So I would say do your best and don’t feel bad if one week you can’t get organic everything, just try to stick to the chart when you can.
You could even print it out and keep it in your bag for shopping trips.
Also avoided buying waxed lemons and limes, did you know many wax coatings may include animal or insect parts, corn, tar, shellacs, beeswax, paraffin's, palm oil derivatives and synthetic resins. (So vegans def need to avoid them). Different countries use different things to wax citrus fruits and in USA, wax isn't limited to just citrus fruits, they also can coat these - aubergines, apples, avocados, bell peppers, cantaloupes, cucumbers, grapefruits, lemons, limes, melons, oranges, parsnips, passion fruits, peaches, pineapples, pumpkins, swede, squashes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and turnips.
The waxes sometimes contain fungicides, thiabendazole, ortho-phenylphenol, sodium ortho-phenyl phenate, imazalil, dicloran and sodium borate.
Lets just look at one of these - thiabendazole, side effects could be confusion, diarrhea (severe), hallucinations (seeing, hearing, and feeling things that are not there), irritability, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting (severe), numbness or tingling in the hands or feet. Now of course you would need to eat a fair few waxed items to get a high enough dose to effect you, but imagine if you are having lots of fruits and veg coated in this stuff and on top all the other dodgy chemicals, see how it can build up and lead to disease?
And if you can't find unwaxed items, you can pour boiling water over the lemons to soften the wax, scrub the lemons with a vegetable brush under warm water, then pat them dry with a towel.
Another part of this is the workers who use pesticides in their jobs, over 385 million people suffer with unintentional pesticide poisoning annually, 11,000 of which die. When we chose to buy organic foods over non organic, we are using our cash to make a stand against this, change begins with us, even on a small scale.
If you haven’t seen it this is an eye opening documentary about Bananas and pesticides.
