The ‘Clean 15’ list for our health and wellness

Food should be our medicine, and our medicine should be our food (Hippocrates)

A surge of interest in improving personal health and wellness has seen many turn to food as their medicine.  Wellness advocates and some healthcare practitioners will tell you that much of the chronic illnesses so many are battling with today can be corrected through change of lifestyle, with diet and nutrition forming a big part of the change.  As more people make these changes in diet they need to know that they food they are consuming can be their medicine, and won’t make them ill.  But with what we know about the methods used in conventional agriculture, we also know that chemical pesticides and fertilizers are an intrinsic part of these methods.

Many advocate organic as the best choice but for some this is not always possible due to availability or affordability.  So what do you do?

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has for the past nine years analyzed pesticide residue data of fruit and vegetables tested by US authorities, to produce the EWG Shoppers Guide to Pesticides in Produce.  The guide is a tool to help consumers make informed choices for their health and wellness.  Released in April the 2013 guide reports on 51 items based on 28000 samples taken by the USDA and FDA and as usual provides a “Clean 15” and “Dirty Dozen”.

Ok so we are in Hong Kong and if you are reading this in other parts of the world you may think it doesn’t apply, but you would be wrong.  Conventional farming practices are consistently the same all over the world and monoculture practices breed the same pests, so it is likely that pesticides levels will be in a similar range.  A quick perusal of the origin of fruits and vegetables in our Hong Kong supermarkets reveals that most are sourced from the USA and China.  I make an assumption here that unless produce from China is Certified Organic by IFOAM then it is likely to be laden with pesticides at possibly higher levels than that found in US samples.

Clean 15 highlights – the good news

• Includes a number of fruits for which tests showed little to no pesticide residues
• Clean fruits include avocado, pineapple, kiwi, grapefruit and mango
• For the Clean 15 vegetables multiple pesticide residues were found to be rare, which means that these are a good option for non-organic choices
• Clean vegetables include onions, frozen peas, asparagus, eggplant and sweet potato

Dirty Dozen highlights – the bad news

• The most contaminated fruits hold the top three positions and include apples, strawberries and grapes
• The most contaminated vegetables include spinach, celery, sweet peppers, and cucumbers
• Potatoes have the highest total weight of pesticides of all crops
• Most of the top 10 tested positive for between 13 and 15 different pesticides….what chance to the bugs have…
• Organophosphates (known neurotoxins) and organochloride (banned) pesticides were also found in leafy greens and squash
• More bad news for your children’s health and wellness is that pesticides were found in fruits and vegetables processed to for baby food

Children are most at risk

Dr Lu, an expert in the field of pesticide exposure and health risk assessment, and the presenter of a video on the EWG site, concluded in a study reported in 2010 that

The frequent consumption of food commodities with episodic presence of pesticide residues that are suspected to cause developmental and neurological effects in young children supports the need for further mitigation.

In earlier work, Lu and his colleagues tested children participating in the Children Pesticide Exposure Study, by replacing conventional foods (fruit and vegetables) eaten by children with organic foods for a period of just 5 days.  Urine pesticide levels dropped to non-detectable ranges for the duration of the 5 day organic diet.

In closing I say

Let thy food be thy medicine…

…but make the choice to be informed about how clean your food is.  As an organic advocate I recommend that where you can, buy organic and local, because the more consumers support organic producers the cheaper this food option becomes.

Be well and live well!

Angie

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