The Dirty Dozen - Produce with the Most Residues

Different foods make us feel different ways.  This is called food energetics.  Eating organic food can make you feel more energized and alive.  The taste is cleaner and more flavorful!  In the United States as of late, organic products are one of the fastest growing categories of food.  The amount of US consumers that bought organic food and drink in 2009 was up 22% than from 2000, according to the Organic Trade Association.

Back in the "olden" days, ALL foods were organic.  You didn't have to worry about herbicides, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and fertilizers being used.  Around WW2 is when large scale factory farming began, and when chemicals began being used.  Not only has this resulted in chemicals in our food supply, but it has also depleted the soil of its minerals.  The foods, vegetable and animal, that are produced are therefore also deficient in nutrients and full of pollutants.  Pesticides in our bodies have been shown to cause cancer, liver, kidney and blood diseases.

Organic farming is for the land.  The fertilizer for soil on organic farms is made from broken down plant waste or compost.  Organic produce contains more vitamins and minerals that farmed produce.  Who would have thought that the apples and spinach we eat have depleted nutrients?!  According to the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, organic fruits and vegetables have 50-60% higher levels of anitioxidants than factory farmed fruits and veggies.

If you spend a little more now on organic fruits and veggies, you may save a lot later in doctor bills.  But you don't have to buy everything organic.  Here's a list of the pesticide residue's in produce, or what we like to call the dirty dozen and the clean 15!  This system of ranking produce is from the EWG, or environmental working group.