Why I No Longer Pay Much Attention to EWG's Dirty Dozen™

Last Saturday my entire family was out and about doing errands in an unfamiliar part of town when we passed a farmers market. We made a note of it and on the way home stopped there for lunch and groceries. We were so glad we did.

This market was much larger than the farmers markets closer to my home that I usually frequent. While it was tougher to keep track of my kids (I was very glad my husband was with me), there was plenty to love among the aisles and aisles of vendors. In addition to tons of beautiful produce, there was honey and freshly squeezed juices, tamales and hummus, natural meats and fresh fish, flowers and potted plants, bread and pastries. There were eggs, $6 for 30 ($2.40 a dozen, about half of what I normally pay). I bought 60. When we passed a musician playing a James Taylor-esque version of "Up on the Roof," one of my 5yo's favorite songs, my son looked at me and immediately put his hand out for a dollar to put in the hat. It was like we were meant to be there.

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EWG's 2013 Dirty Dozen List

The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™

Every year for the past nine years, the Environmental Working Group has published their Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ based on tests for pesticide residue conducted by the USDA and FDA. EWG specifically highlights "The Dirty Dozen™": produce likely to have a higher level of pesticide residue, which they recommend avoiding or purchasing organic. For the last couple years, EWG has expanded their Dirty Dozen™ list with a Plus category resulting in "The Dirty Dozen Plus™". The "Plus" refers to crops that do not meet traditional Dirty Dozen™ criteria but that were commonly contaminated with exceptionally toxic pesticides. Consumers should prioritize purchasing organic versions of these vegetables as well if possible. The produce with the least residue is termed "The Clean Fifteen™."

Use the The Dirty Dozen™ to Prioritize Purchases

This guide is not intended to scare you into not buying fruits and vegetables. Any produce is better than no produce. And conventional fruit and vegetables are certainly better than processed or packaged foods. Instead, this information is intended to help families who cannot afford to purchase all organic produce limit their exposure to pesticides, especially harmful to developing fetuses and young children. You can use the guide to substitute produce from The Clean Fifteen™ for The Dirty Dozen Plus™ (for example, I might decide our family will eat more kiwi and fewer apples), or use the guide to help you decide which produce you will buy organic and which you will buy conventional (for example, I might buy organic strawberries and conventional onions). When I first started going green, I found that selectively purchasing organic produce helped a lot with the sticker shock of switching to greener foods.

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EWG's 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce

EWG updates this their Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce every year based on tests for pesticide residue conducted by the USDA and FDA.  EWG specifically highlights "The Dirty Dozen," produce likely to have a higher level of pesticide residue, which they recommend avoiding or purchasing organic. They produce with the least residue is termed "The Clean Fifteen." If you can't afford to purchase all organic produce, this guide can help you prioritize which produce to buy organic. I now shop for almost all my produce through the farmer's market and my CSA, but when I first started going green, I picked and chose what to buy organic. I felt fine about buying conventional onions and melons, but only bought organic greens, grapes, and berries. It helped with the sticker shock.

The 2012 Dirty Dozen:

• apples
• celery
• sweet bell peppers
• peaches
• strawberries
• nectarines (imported)
• grapes
• spinach
• lettuce
• cucumbers
• blueberries (domestic)
• potatoes

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Getting the Most Out of Your Farmer’s Market

I love shopping at the farmer's market! In fact, the farmer's market is the only place I shop for food on a weekly basis. I buy most of my produce there. Looking for a farmer's market in your area? Check localharvest.org.


Shopping at the Farmer's Market: Eco-novice's Top Ten Tips

Shop at the right time of day. If you want the best prices, go shortly before the close of the market, when farmers are often willing to haggle, especially if you buy a large amount. If you want the best selection, go in the morning. Which brings me to my next point...

Find out what time the market really opens. Officially, my farmer's market opens at 9 am and closes at 1 pm each Saturday. After shopping there for nearly a year, I found out that almost all the farmers showed up by 7 am in the summer, and 8 am in the winter. Before I figured this out, by the time I showed up at 9 am or 10 am, farmers were often out of items they had in limited quantity. Now I go at 8 am, especially if raspberries are in season.

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New Dirty Dozen and Other Weekend Links

The big news is that EWG published their new Dirty Dozen (and Clean Fifteen). Here is the cute printable guide. I prefer to print out the full list. Each year, EWG ranks pesticide contamination of popular fruits and vegetables based on their analysis of 51,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted by the USDA and the FDA. You can read more about the methodology here.  A few facts that will make your head spin (from EWG):

• As a category. peaches have been treated with more pesticides than any other produce, registering combinations of up to 57 different chemicals. Apples were next, with 56 pesticides and raspberries with 51.
• A single celery sample was contaminated with 13 different chemicals, followed by a single sample of sweet bell peppers (11), and greens (10).

If you value this kind of information, please sign EWG's petition telling the USDA to stop funding a California-based pro-pesticide, big agriculture group, which has accused EWG of discouraging produce consumption (P.S. The USDA has also not yet released the latest pesticide residue data). Consumers aren't smart enough to make up their own minds about pesticides, so the argument goes, and all this information just scares them unnecessarily! This is the same argument used for not labeling GMOs, by the way.  If only we could actually trust the USDA to make decisions in the public interest, instead of acting like the lap dog of Big Ag.  In the meantime, give me the information please.

In other breaking news, the USDA has replaced the Food Pyramid with My Plate.  Definitely more useful, but personally I won't be looking to the USDA for eating advice anytime soon.  Check out this awesome comparison of what the USDA recommends you eat versus what foods they subsidize.  Love that USDA!

A few more reads:

Another reason to eat organic meat.

Tips for avoiding food poisoning without toxic chemicals.

And a fun instead of depressing one: finds at the antique shop!

Happy Father's Day!

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Save Money on Food while Going Green (The Cost of Going Green, Part 2)

Visiting the local farm from which we buy much of our organic produce.

In many cases, going green is totally compatible with being frugal.  Our consumerist culture has gotten us into a lot of trouble with chemicals and climate, and you can take a large step in a greener direction simply by buying less.  In part 1 of the series "The Cost of Going Green" I described a number of ways to save money while going green.

But sometimes being green does cost more money.  For example, organic and natural food usually cost more money than conventional food.   Below are some ideas to make greening your food more affordable (I wish I did all of these, but I don't.  I'm working on it):

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Not Blueberries! -- Produce and Pesticides

The Environmental Working Group has published its latest findings on pesticides in produce.  They publish a list that includes the 12 fruits or vegetables with the greatest number of pesticides and the 15 that have the least.  By avoiding the conventional (= not organic) versions of the “Dirty Dozen” you can drastically reduce your exposure to pesticides.  The website includes a printable version of their guide.  Find the full list of 49 fruits and vegetables ranked from best to worst here.

Should you bother to try to avoid pesticides?  In my public policy program, we read Risk and Reason, which pretty well convinced me that pesticides do not cause cancer.  I didn't worry about pesticides or hormones one bit while pregnant with my first child.  But when it came time to give #1 solid foods, a lot of the books brought up the issue of pesticides, and I started to look into it.  I still think pesticides probably do not cause a great cancer risk to healthy adults (since the benefits of the nutrients in the produce probably outweigh the risk of the pesticides used to grow the produce), but now I am concerned about the effect of pesticides on fetuses, infants, and children -- particularly the effect of endocrine disruptors (which practically every chemical and plastic seems to be).

Most of what I have read suggests that pesticide regulation is strong enough for adults, but not for fetuses, infants and children, who consume a much higher ratio of food-to-weight than adults.  I'm not sure I'll be so careful when my children are older, but for now, I buy the "Dirty Dozen" organic whenever I can.  Since I'm cheap, I mostly buy the "Clean 15" not-organic.  Organic is indisputably better for the environment, if not personal health.  Blueberries used to be on the low pesticide list, and I happily bought the 5-pound clamshell at Trader Joe's for my blueberry-loving family whenever it was available.  Now I'll have to rethink that purchasing behavior.

Here is what the Environmental Working Group has to say about pesticides and health:

As acknowledged by U.S. and international government agencies, different pesticides have been linked to a variety of health problems, including:

    * Nervous system toxicity
    * Cancer
    * Hormone system effects
    * Skin, eye and lung irritation

Pesticides are unique among the chemicals we release into the environment. They are designed to kill living organisms -- insects, plants, and fungi that are considered "pests." Because they are toxic by design, many pesticides pose health dangers to people, risks that have been established by independent research scientists and physicians across the world.


And here they discuss why children are at the greatest risk:

It is well established that pesticides pose a risk to vital organ systems that grow and mature from conception throughout infancy and childhood. Exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals during rapid development can have lasting adverse effects both in early childhood and later in life.

The metabolism, physiology and biochemistry of the fetus, infant and young child are fundamentally different from those of adults. A young organism is often less able to metabolize and inactivate toxic chemicals. It can be much more vulnerable to the harmful effects of pesticides. Chemicals that do no measurable harm to adults can subtly and sometimes permanently damage the nervous system, brain, reproductive organs and endocrine (hormone) system of the fetus and young child. The developing brain and endocrine system are extremely sensitive to subtle changes in hormone levels that signal transitions to different developmental stages. . . .

The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 was designed to require protection of infants and children from pesticides. . . But much remains to be done, especially in protecting human health from pesticide mixtures and chemicals that have endocrine-disrupting properties. Not surprisingly, pesticide makers and agribusiness groups have been fighting strict application of the statute, particularly provisions that require an extra 10-fold level of protection for infants and children. 



Do you try to avoid pesticides in your children's food? 

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