Strawberries top EWG’s Dirty Dozen list for 2020.
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If organic foods are in your budget, you may want to think twice about buying conventional strawberries, spinach, and kale. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a US-based research and advocacy group, released its 2020 Dirty Dozen list this week, an annual guide for fresh produce buyers that assesses which fruits and vegetables are most contaminated by pesticides and therefore potentially carcinogenic.
More than 90 percent of the strawberry, apple, cherry, spinach, nectarine and kale samples that EWG tested tested positive for residues of two or more pesticides, and several kale samples showed eighteen different pesticides. In fact, on average, the EWG found that the kale and spinach samples had 1.1 to 1.8 times more pesticide residues by weight than any other crop tested.
And yes, these products are sold in supermarkets in the United States, where the USDA considers them safe to eat. Some background: USDA does not test for all pesticides used in crop production, including glyphosate (also known as Roundup), which is “the most widely used pesticide in the US,” says the EWG. “High levels can be found in various grains and beans, such as oats and chickpeas, due to their increasing use as a drying agent before harvest.” It is not ideal.
Organic kale is the way to go if you want to avoid pesticides.
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If you’re eager to phase out pesticides from your diet, keep the EWG’s most recent list of dirty dozens in mind (or on your shopping list) the next time you go to the grocery store. Remember that some local farms and producers do not have an official organic certification, but are also proudly pesticide-free, so you can always ask about the origin of their produce at farmers markets if you are concerned about the foods on the list:
EWG’s Dirty Dozen for 2020
- Strawberries
- Spinach
- kale
- Nectarines
- Apples
- Grapes
- Peaches
- Cherries
- Pears
- Tomatoes
- Celery
- Potato
Avocado tops the list of fifteen clean
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Along with the annual Dirty Dozen, the EWG also puts together a Clean Fifteen list – that is, a list of items you don’t have to worry about buying conventionally. The fifteen items on the list were found to contain the least amount of pesticide residue, and nearly 70 percent of Clean Fifteen’s fruit and vegetable samples had no pesticide residue. The top of the list is the cleanest, with less than 2 percent of the avocado and sweet corn samples showing detectable pesticides:
- Avocados
- Sweet corn
- Pineapple
- Onions
- Papaya
- Sweet peas (frozen)
- Aubergines
- Asparagus
- Cauliflower
- Melons
- Broccoli
- Mushrooms
- Cabbage
- Sweet melon
- Kiwi
Spend strawberries, save avocados, and you’re well on your way to a cleaner diet.
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