If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, most people automatically assume they’re eating clean. Research politely disagrees.
While organic produce sales have been on the rise with the rich, middle-class and upper-middle-class, the lower-class and lower-middle-class still have to contend with the dangerous chemicals on our fresh food that we simply can’t afford to avoid. In some supermarkets and grocery stores, the organic produce costs several dollars more than non-organic fruits and vegetables. When compared, the fruits and vegetables look relatively the same, but they don’t come even close to each other in quality.
In almost all non-organic fruits and vegetables, the FDA and EPA has found residual evidence of the chemicals they’ve been spraying all over our food, chemicals so harsh they have to wear hazmat suits while spraying. The most common toxic pesticide in the United States is organophosphate (OP), which includes the chemicals chlorpyrifos and malathion. In apples, nearly 99% of samples contained anywhere from 2 to 56 different chemicals from pesticides (including those mentioned above). Even if you wash the apple, you will still take in toxins. Sometimes even if you skin it. Why? Because the pesticides that are layered over the outside of the plant also seep into the soil that delivers water and nutrients to the plant’s roots. Even banned pesticides, like formentanate that was banned in 2013, can make their way into your food if there are still traces left in the soil. Pesticides can even penetrate the fruit or vegetable directly, if the protective layer of the food is thin enough to allow substances to soak through.
What’s more interesting, is that the EPA can ban the use of a certain pesticide on a certain crop, but still use it on other types of crops. They try to make it all better by saying it’s only a small amount. Truthfully, it’s a small amount of dangerous chemicals that build up in the body with each piece of contaminated food you eat causing you illness and chronic disease after long-term consumption.
In one study done in 2013 by the United State’s Department of Agriculture, 2/3 of over 3000 produce samples were found to be carriers of pesticide residue–the worst of the fruits and vegetables being leafy greens, hot peppers, nectarines, peaches and other soft skinned fruit. Non-organic hot peppers, for example, have been drenched in copious amounts of acephate, chlorpyrifos and oxamyl—all toxic chemicals to our nervous system, behavioral health and brain function, not to mention the fact that they are also a culprit in causing some cancers, according to beyondpesticides.org. Some pesticides have even been shown to negatively affect sperm count and their overall condition.
Pesticides also affect children the worst, research confirms. With elevated rates of brain development issues, childhood cancer, behavioral issues and asthma, parents who thought they had a reasonable healthy diet and no genetic problems of their own are beginning to wonder why their children are suffering. The answer is chemicals. More importantly, synthetic chemicals.
The awful thing is that you really can’t avoid pesticides at all if you buy non-organic food. All of it is somewhere on the spectrum between low and high toxicity. Even if you do eat organic, there is a small chance that the food came from a “bad crop” that was secretly abused with cheaper, main-stream pesticides or heavy metals, then marketed at full organic price. A similar situation you may have heard about involved potato crops that were allowed to be sprayed with copper (read the story here).
There is no way to completely rid your food of pesticides, either. Some websites will suggest you cook your non-organic foods that have been shown to contain higher levels of pesticide residue, but this can deplete your food of some very important nutrients. They also suggest you to wash them with a diluted solution of water and dish soap, but that treatment is also risky because most dish soaps contain SLS (used as a foaming agent that can irritate/damage skin), synthetic dyes and fragrance, which are just blanket terms for scores of other chemicals that have not been properly tested or have and the side-effects ignored (because it’s expensive to use quality, safe ingredients). When people who can’t afford organic produce start getting nervous about being systematically poisoned, they head to the frozen food isle, only to to be taking in different chemicals that are just (if not more) harmful than produce pesticides and can cause an array of other chronic diseases/conditions, like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
At the end of the day, these companies and government subsidized farms don’t care about how healthy you are or about how good you feel. Face it. They care about making money and they care about getting their grubby hands on materials and synthetic substances that are the cheapest for them to use.
The safer, environment-friendly alternative insecticides are more expensive. No question about it. When farmers and food industry workers have to make that choice, they will almost always choose the option that keeps more green in their wallets. We deserve to know what we’re nourishing ourselves with, because if we don’t know, how can we really make an educated decision about what we want to put in our bodies?
Their choices affect you. Be aware, and if you can, buy locally grown organic produce. If you can’t, then make sure to wash your produce with all-natural dish soap (heavily diluted with water), or better yet, grow your own.
If you feel passionate about eating clean, you can also sign this petition.
Sources and further reading:
http://saferchemicals.org/2015/06/08/fruits-and-veggies-with-a-side-of-pesticides/
http://eartheasy.com/eat_pesticides_produce.htm
http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig018
https://depts.washington.edu/ceeh/downloads/FF_Pesticides.pdf
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/health/cancer.php
http://www.naturalnews.com/039710_organic_product_pesticide_residents.html
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