Pesticide-Ridden Produce: The 12 Most Infected Fruits, Vegetables

Americans can slash most pesticide residue from their foods by replacing only the most pesticide-ridden produce with organic fruits and veggies, per the medical and public health communities.  

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently released its annual Dirty Dozen list, which publicly ranks results of USDA and FDA testing of 32,000 samples of 48 non-organic fruits and veggies commonly found in the U.S.  

(Note: The Environmental Working Group is a non-profit devoted to "research and advocacy in the areas of toxic chemicals, agricultural subsidies, public lands, and corporate accountability." The 22-year-old group's mission is "to use the power of public information to protect public health and the environment.")

"Two-thirds of produce samples in recent government tests had pesticide residues," writes the EWG. "Don't want to eat bug- and weed-killers?... We highlight the cleanest and dirtiest conventionally-raised fruits and vegetables."  

Without further ado, the EWG's 2014 Dirty Dozen are listed below. 

Next week, check back for the EWG's 2014 Clean Fifteen, listing the most pesticide-free non-organic produce currently sold in the U.S. (Hint! Avocados are #1 cleanest.  Bring on that guacamole...)

EWG's 2014 Dirty Dozen - "Each of these foods contained a number of different pesticide residues and showed high concentrations of pesticides relative to other produce items."

1. Apples - "99% of apple samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue."

2. Celery - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesicides apiece."

3. Cherry Tomatoes - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesticides apiece."

4. Cucumbers

5. Grapes - "A single grape tested positive for 15 pesticides."

6. Nectarines (imported only, not grown in the USA) - "Every sample of imported nectarines tested positive for at least one pesticide residue."

7. Peaches

8. Potatoes - "The average potato had more pesticides by weight than any other food."

9. Snap Peas (imported only, not grown in the USA) - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesicides apiece."

10. Spinach

11. Strawberries - Single samples "tested positive for 13 different pesicides apiece."

12. Sweet Bell Peppers

Urban Farming Ignites Thanks to Alice Waters: Return to American Roots

Everything old is new again, at least in U.S. urban farming.  A much-needed return to American agriculture roots. 

And that's very good news for tens of millions of city dwellers today, especially school-age children. 

Alice Waters, innovative chef and leading real food activist, is credited with igniting America's return to urban agriculture by founding her Edible Schoolyard Project two decades ago. 

The White House staff, led by First Lady Michelle Obama, stylishly reinforced the principles of the Edible Schoolyard Project by replanting and publicizing a vegetable garden on White House grounds. 

Before the 20th century, Americans grew much of their family food supply. During both World Wars, U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt urged Americans to cultivate backyard produce gardens to ameliorate food shortages. At its height, the National Victory Garden movement produced 9 million pounds a year of fruits and vegetables during World War II, about 44% of the nation's produce. 

Urban agriculture largely died after World War II, as U.S. households eagerly bought the new ultra-convenient industrial-made foods filling supermarkets and sold by a rapidly expanding new breed of restaurant, the fast food joint.  The rest is American fake-food history...

In 2013,  a remarkably powerful resurgence of urban farming has been fueled by Alice Waters' pioneering 20-year-old agenda to restore "edible education" to urban school children and their families.  

Per a report released last week by the UCLA School of Public affairs, Los Angeles County, home to 10 million residents, boasts...

"... 1,261 verified urban agriculture sites — categorized as school gardens, community gardens and commercial primary growing sites... School gardens make up the majority of L.A. County's urban agriculture activity, with 761 sites. Commercial agricultural operations (nurseries and farms) total 382 sites, and the researchers documented 118 community gardens."

Los Angeles' tally of localized farming operations hasn't surged this high for nearly one hundred years, when midwest farmers were famously drawn west to California for its fertile land and fair weather. (See ad at right, circa 1929.)

The revitalized push to bring fresh produce to urban dwellers via local agriculture isn't confined to greater Los Angeles, which is uniquely suited in its vastness to accommodate growing crops.    

Similar projects proliferate across the nation, including in...

Seattle, where the city Office of Sustainability and Environment vigorously fosters urban farming, even declaring 2010 the "Year of Urban Agriculture." In 2008, the Seattle City Council passed the Local Food Action Initiative "to improve the local and regional food system."

Detroit, where urban farming has boomed as the sole source of fresh produce for a plethora of residents of the financially battered city. 

Chicago, where city zoning ordinances were elaborately amended to "allow agricultural uses like community gardens and urban farms in many parts of the city." 

Atlanta, where the Urban Agriculture Training Program has met massive statewide response in its program of "cultivating urban farmers and gardeners to build healthy, vibrant local food communities."

New York City, which is "starved for space, but increasingly, residents are filling every last inch they can find with (healthy) things they can grow and eat," notes WellandGoodNYC.com in an article on New York City's Biggest Urban Farms. "When The Design Trust for Public Space released its Five Borough Farm report last year, it found more than 700 food-producing sites within the five boroughs..."

The urban agriculture trend has exploded worldwide, as well. And just in time to partially meet demands of both American and worldwide hunger and healthy-food-shortage crises:

• 50% of the world's population lives in cities.
• By 2015, 26 cities in the world are expected to have a population of 10 million-plus.
• 250 million hungry people in the world live in cities. (Source - Wikipedia)

Thanks to one low-key meeting between Alice Waters and a public middle-school principal in her Berkeley neighborhood two decades ago, one acre of blighted school yard was tilled, seeded, and tended into a glorious vegetable garden that transformed those students' lives... and transformed our national mindset about urban farming.

Or rather, reawakened Americans to the empowerment of growing our own produce, just as our families did before the powerful rise of industrial fake-food mega-corporations. 

Everything old and valuable and healthy is new again in U.S. urban farming. 

Obama, Bush, Romney, Clinton: "Let Them Eat Cake" Politicians on Organics

Who eats organic fruits and vegetables? Top U.S. political leaders, both liberals and conservatives, but most desperately don't want you to know.

Many, many D.C. politicians select the highest-quality, healthiest foods for themselves, but insist that far lower quality fare (often grown by their donors) is good enough for the rest of America. 

Wanting to eat organic produce is understandable, given that organics are:

• Not genetically modified.
• Free of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides
• Free of antibiotics
• Free of chemical fertilizers, plant steroids
• Not prematurely ripened with chemical gases

Understandable, since these bureaucrats have likely heard that the EPA, which is part of the U.S. Agriculture Department, "considers 60% of herbicides, 90% of fungicides, and 30% of insecticides potentially cancer-causing."

Or maybe our leaders have heard the dire results of research done on this new experiment called genetically modified foods. "The results range from intestinal damage, allergies, liver or pancreatic problems, testicular cellular changes, tumors, and even death in the experimental animals."  (Source - Care2.com)

So who are these "let them eat cake" politicians who quietly quaff organic goods while foisting legislation and federal agency appointees on us to aggressively force non-organic food on American homes? 

Obama Eliminates Life-Saving Produce Inspection Program

I fully agree with Food Safety News that the most egregious food safety story of 2012 was the killing of the USDA's Microbiological Data Program ("MDP") that performed "80 percent of federal testing for foodborne pathogens of fresh fruit and vegetables," including:

• E. coli 0157:H7 - A bacterium that can produce a deadly toxin and causes approximately 73,000 cases of foodborne illness each year in the U.S.
• Salmonella - Most common bacterial cause of diarrhea in the United States, and the most common cause of foodborne deaths. Responsible for 1.4 million cases of foodborne illness a year. 
• Norovirus - The leading viral cause of diarrhea in the United States. Poor hygiene causes Norovirus to be easily passed from person to person and from infected individuals to food items.
• Shigella - Causes an estimated 448,000 cases of diarrhea illnesses per year. Poor hygiene causes Shigella to be easily passed from person to person and from infected individuals to food items. 

Death by Produce

"CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases." (Source: Center for Disease Control website)

In 2010 the National Institutes of Health acknowledged "fresh fruits and vegetables as major vehicles of foodborne illness." 

"MDP was killed because the produce lobby wanted it killed."
"The program’s demise likely means there will be more illnesses and deaths in 2013 from foodborne pathogens associated with fresh fruits and vegetables," per Food Safety News. 

"MDP was killed because the produce lobby wanted it killed. The Obama Administration went along by not asking Congress to renew MDP’s funding of about $5 million a year, and lawmakers were content to let it expire."  (Source - Food Safety News) 

A highly effective $5 million dollar federal program killed for political expediency. A $5 million program that annually can save thousands of American lives. 

$5 million is an microscopic portion of the $3.8 trillion 2013 United States federal budget. A tiny fraction of the Defense Department's $600 billion annual budget. 

$5 million is expendable pocket-change compared to the $20 billion in annual farm subsidies (i.e. government handouts) paid by the federal government to certain certain farmers and agribusinesses.... the very growers of fruits and veggies that will no longer be inspected under MDP auspices for dangerous foodborne contaminations.

What Can You Do? 
1. Complain loudly and clearly to your elected representatives in Congress. Now. Restoring one $5 million public safety program should be an easy task. 

2. Be very, very careful about where you buy your fruits and veggies. My advice is to either buy directly from local, reputable, certified organic sources, or from the largest grocery chains that presumably have in place quality control procedures. 

Please note that organic produce is not immune from foodborne contamination. However, organic certification does denote a very high-bar for quality control of a grower's produce. 

3. Grow your own.

My Real Food Christmas Wish for Liberals, Conservatives Alike

If I could give just one glorious Christmas gift to each loved one, it would be a weekly CSA delivery of freshly picked produce. 

Ron and I have received one weekly (for less than $22) for the past 15 months, and it's completely changed our lives. We feel better, certainly, and both of us have pleased our family doctor with the health results of eating fresher. (And yes, we've shed a few pounds, albeit far too slowly, as always...)

Because of our weekly carton from Abundant Harvest Organics,  we've also learned to savor simple taste pleasures of nature... the tangy crunch of a newly picked Granny Smith apple, the bursting juiciness of a peach fresh from the tree, the melt-in-your-soul sweetness of corn picked and packed just days ago.   Our daily and weekly meals now revolve around produce, with meat, dairy and breads as add-ons. 

An unexpected side-benefit is that Ron and I now live with more imagination... in cooking, in  eating, in experimenting, in creating.  Even in Googling some unfamiliar oddity. (That's kohlrabi? What is a Chinese flat peach?) 

Most CSAs (aka, community-supported agriculture) are local family farmers or consortiums of small, local family farms who band together to sell their organic and non-organic produce, herbs, eggs, dairy, and grass-fed beef directly to American homes. "Community-supported agriculture (in North America sometimes known as community-shared agriculture) (CSA) is an alternative, locally-based socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution" per Wikipedia. 

To my beloved conservative friends (and son!), NO, CSA farmers are NOT a bunch of sprouts-munching liberals. In fact, they're all hardworking entrepreneurs who harken back to the farming practices and craftsmanship of our grandparents and great-grandparents. They seek to bypass  the processed-food faults of late 20th century industrial food farming practices.

Our chosen CSA "is an alliance of small family farmers in Central California dedicated to growing superior organic produce and getting it to you in the simplest manner possible—and without the use of chemicals or packaging materials." Abundant Harvest Organics promises: 

• Unparalleled taste: varieties are chosen and harvested for taste and nutritional value rather than shelf-life and aesthetics
• Superior quality and value, fairly priced significantly below retail value of the same product from your grocer
• In Season—our produce is always fresh from the field
• Locally grown: investing in our community’s people, its resources, and its physical, as well as economic health
• Fresh, fresh, fresh—from the soil to your dinner table!

Our chosen CSA delivers in many California regions, and due to demand, is rapidly expanding from its current customer base of 5,000 California homes. (Click HERE for delivery locations.) I love the way this CSA connects us customers with the farmers, too. This cancer-survivor farmer's testimony, at Who's Your Farmer?, might touch you as much as it does me... 

CSAs are available throughout California and across the nation. One that really impresses with its generosity, energy, and real food activism is Fair Share CSA Coalition, based in Wisconsin. 

CSAs delivering near you can be found by Googling by state, of course, or at these sites:

• Local Harvest: Real Food. Real Farmers. Real Community. 
• The USDA Community Supported Agriculture website
• Rodale Institute's Farm Locator website

Yes, If I could give just one glorious Christmas gift to each and every loved one this year, it would be a weekly CSA delivery of freshly picked produce. 

I'm hoping that sincerely telling family and friends about my CSA wish for them is the next-best-thing, and will inspire them to join us in eating healthier while supporting family farmers and local economies.  Merry Christmas!