🥬 The Truth About Your Fruits and Veggies
The Environmental Working Group, a large anti-pesticide group, gives us guidance on how to shop for produce in 2025.
We’ve been plagued by pesticides in our produce for many years now, and it’s common knowledge that almost all grocery shopping hauls — supermarket or farmer’s market — should be followed by extensive washing.
You might get the ick from today’s newsletter, but I think it’s important you know that even washing those fruits and veggies might not be enough.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a food safety group focused on promoting awareness around pesticide contamination in produce from Monsanto, will soon release it’s “Clean Fifteen” and “Dirty Dozen” lists of produce in the U.S.
These lists serve as their recommendations for fruits and veggies that have turned up, via their extensive research and development, as the least contaminated and most contaminated respectively.
Let’s look at 2024’s round up from last March and see what fruits and veggies were (and might still be) more high-priorityshopping for.
Newsletter Summary:
The Clean Fifteen — Produce you can feel good about continuing to buy
The Dirty Dozen — Produce you might want to think twice about (no matter how “organic”)
One quote about double-checking
The Clean 15 Fruits and Veggies
Avocados
Sweetcorn
Pineapple
Onions
Papaya
Frozen Sweet Peas
Asparagus
Honeydew Melon
Kiwi
Cabbage
Mushrooms
Mangoes
Sweet Potatoes
Watermelons
Carrots
The EWG’s team found that in at least 65% of these veggies harvested last year there were 0 detected pesticides.
Less than 2% of the Avocados and Sweetcorn showed any detectable pesticides, making them the healthiest of the 46,000 samples of fruits and veggies that EWG aggregated with the assistance of the USDA.
Worth noting: Non-organic produce are significantly higher in pesticide count than organic produce, but organic produce isn’t perfect, either.
The downside: Organic produce is almost always more expensive than it’s non-organic counterpart, and unless you’re planning to work two jobs, most Americans aren’t going to want to shell out the extra few (or hundred, depending on the size of your grocery haul) dollars for that.
So, how do we win?
Well, let’s not get too bleak here.
Your local farmer’s market is still probably the better option for your produce than a grocery store, but even if you’re settling for grocery store fruits and veggies, the EWG acknowledges:
“Everyone should eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, whether organic or conventionally grown. The health benefits of such a diet outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure.”
Make no mistake — this is not saying you have to cut out all leafy greens because so few of them made the Clean 15.
A fruit and vegetable-rich diet will always beat a processed one and lower your risk of all-cause mortality.
It’s also worth noting that the pesticides and fungicides — fludioxonil, pyraclostrobin, boscalid and pyrimethanil — protect our food in the short-term.
But if you have the means and ability to, shop organic at all costs (no pun intended).
There are a host of endocrine and reproductive issues that an excess of these chemicals can cause.
Awareness about them — however minimal the risk — is crucial to not get complacent about your health, and we’ll highlight them in the Dirty Dozen.
2024’s Dirty Dozen Fruits and Veggies
Grapes
Nectarines
Bell and hot peppers
Cherries
In these samples, 209 different pesticides and fungicides were found on the food.
Kale, collard and mustard greens — which are heralded as superfoods, usually — had the largest variety of pesticides contaminating their samples.
You might think, “Why the hell would farmers agree to this?”
The truth is that we’re in a bit of a food shortage right now with geopolitical wars, supply chain issues and high operating costs.
Those high-priced groceries?
That stems from farmers having to spend more money on pesticides and fungicides to protect crops to make sure they get to supermarkets without contamination, mold, or insect-borne disease.
When you put yourself in the farmer’s shoes, it kinda makes sense.
They have to produce more than they every have because we’re importing less than ever before.
Margins are likely tight because grocers have probably been stingy about what they’ll purchase groceries for.
And Monsanto, the supplier of these toxic pesticides, has them in a bind. No pesticides/fungicides, no produce.
Still, we have to highlight the emerging research about the toxins that the Dirty Dozen — and all other pesticides — have shown in humans.
From EWG:
Studies of fludioxonil have found it can act like estrogen, increasing the proliferation of breast cancer cells. It also has the potential to harm the male reproductive system. Fludioxonil is found on 90 percent of peaches and nearly 30 percent of Dirty Dozen samples.
Pyrimethanil has been linked to thyroid disruption and might block androgen receptors in the body. Pyrimethanil was the most frequently detected pesticide on pears, showing up on 54 percent of samples.
Some studies have suggested that pyraclostrobin could be associated with liver toxicity and metabolic disorders. Pyraclostrobin was found on 10 percent or more of each Dirty Dozen item, and about half of strawberry and cherry samples.
In animal studies, boscalid has been linked to cancer and thyroid dysfunction, and it may also disrupt hormones. Boscalid was found on almost half of blueberry samples, and just over 50 percent of cherries and strawberries.
Again, should we stop buying produce from the Dirty Dozen altogether? Probably not.
Many of these are still rich in nutrients that can be hard to supplement elsewhere.
That said, it’s worth looking at the nutrient profiles of these veggies (if you’re a nutrition nerd like me) to figure out which Dirty Dozens you can swap for Clean Fifteens.
Need your Vitamin K and Iron but don’t want to buy dirty spinach or kale?
Go with cabbage.
Need quercetin and other antioxidants for your immune system but scared of Dirty Dozen cherries?
Go with onions.
Sure, not all of these are clean swaps from a taste profile perspective, but they do have similar nutrients.
Again, it’s worth waiting a month for 2025’s EWG report in March to see the new and updated list, but if you have an affinity for any of these fruits and veggies, think twice about where you’re getting them from.
One Quote About Double-Checking Things
“Always double check. Small things can become big things. And don’t play favors.”
Thanks to my client Heather for the resources on today’s newsletter.