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honeywater
Raw Newbie
in an old vegetarian magazine i once had, it had a list of fruits and vegetables that you should always try to eat organically (strawberries, for example) and a list of foods you shouldn’t worry about buying organic (like bananas).
does anyone know where i can find this list online or anything? i want to eat as organically as possible, but as a poor college student, i simply can not afford that. so i would like to know which fruits and veggies i should be buying that are organic and which ones i shouldn’t be sweating over.
thanks!
Comments
I was told recently that if the vegetable or fuit has a thick outer shell then it is okay to buy it in the non organic section but for all things that you eat the outside of it or has a thin outer layer than you should definitely buy organic
I don’t know who these guys are, but tell me what you think of the list they give on fruits in the order of pesticide load. I’d like to know too.
http://www.foodnews.org/
I never know which one can absorb into the fruit itself, you know? And yeah, it’s so expensive to buy all organic!
Before I forget: they say that most of the info on their lists take into consideration washing and/or peeling. Taht means that the apples(for example) were washed, so you see the pesticide inside the fruit itself, not the outside.
You want to buy organic bananas or American-grown bananas(such as Hawaiian Apple Bananas.)
Many conventionally grown bananas use the strongest pesticides out there(to ward off tarantulas) and I don’t care how thick the skin is, it’s not worth the risk.
Organic can be costly! I found out recently that Food for Less is carrying Organic produce, I have yet to check out the selection but that would certainly be less expensive. Farmer’s Markets are always great too:)
Apples are terrible
Thanks for that list Alix1962. Apples are on the top. Just as I expected.
It’s also worth considering which produces tend to be genetically modified, and buy organic from these too, because the rules for organic don’t let GM.
I was just watching a video made by Katrina and David (of the national juice feast) and they said generally citrus (oranges, pinneapples, grapfruits etc) and melons are okay to buy not organic. Like others said anything with a thick skin. I don’t konw about veggies but that was a nice list alix posted.
I read that bell peppers are the worst and avocados are the least tainted! I do my best to get everything orgainic, but sometimes it just isn’t available in the winter months. In the summer I grwo my own produce. :)
Regarding avocados, that doesn’t make much sense, given that most pesticides tend to bio-accumulate in fats, and my lovely aligator pears are very high in fats. While it is true that the crop itself isn’t routinely sprayed with insecticides as apples are, the ground around them is drenched with herbicides such as roundup every year. Anything with seeds (strawberries) that you eat is important to eat organic, in my mind. Melons bio-accumulate toxins and heavy metals in their seeds, as the tissure right around those seeds tends to contain a certain amount of heavy metal leachate.
Citrus are very heavily sprayed, but not with long-half life chemicals, so it depends whether you buy organic for your health or the health of people working on the crops. Also, zesting such citrus actually would contain all the pesticides that weren’t in the pulp.
Remember for the most part organics have twice as much nutrition as non organic.So another words you will have to eat 2 apples for 1 so in this sense its cheaper to buy the more nutritional dence food and feel more full and satisfied too.Yes avocados are the lowest on the pesticides and bananas are so so but its really not worth it to poison yourself with pesticides if your truely looking for health.If you do not have the money you can save a fortune by sprouting and growing wheatgrass which is heathier than the mature forms anyway.Also you need to worry about other problems with commercial crops like irradiated crops,genetical modified…..just not worth it not to go organic unless theres no other option.
I’ve never heard that organic foods have twice the nutrition. How is that?
But it’s true!! Because they are grown in a richer soil. In organic farming they replenish nutrients to the soil, with certain plant extracts, and spray the plants with natural substances which don’t extract as much nutrients from the soil as conventional farming do.
In one of Boutenko’s book (I forget which), she does a comparison of nonorganic spinach to organic spinach (she does a few other greens too) and the difference is nutrients is outstounding.
Perhaps most importantly, organic crops are less agressively watered prior to shipping because they are often varieties that have better diesase and pest resistance, rather then shippability characteristics. A water-logged crop is less able to defend itself and actually emits a pheremone that draws insects in from miles around. An ag professor of mine once called vegetables, “water in pretty wrappings,” as that’s what most conventional fruits are. Organic is more nutritionally dense because it’s less diluted. Bio-dynamic is actually even more dense than organic, though I’m sure the difference would be lessened if farms of the same size were compared, since organic superfarms are not all about the soil building. There’s only so much you can do within the mechanized paradigm of farms of over 50 hectares/110 acres.
While it is true that even mega-organic farmers do build the soil with important microbes found in compost that are better able to recycle nutrients and breakdown sub soils and parent materials for mineral nutrition, there is precious little difference for decades—much longer than the 2-5 year organic cert process for most farms. Vitamins, on the other hand, are more plentiful in short order.
Soils are complex and living systems that take thousands of years to build and VERY FEW to destroy. Hence, the problem w/ depleted soils Building a friable and well-textured soil does not a “healthy” soil make—it’s just a start.
The most mineral dense vegetables come when grown with fruit trees (as in bio-dynamics or permaculture) or using tree compost, as they are able to mine mineral nutrients from far deeper than the effective root zone (ERZ) of most crops (usually 7-45cm/3-18 inches). The exception to this is alfalfa, which has an ERZ of nearly 2m/6feet, so a mixed use system that incorporates grazing with soil building with alfalfa in a 5-7 year rotation is another alternative.
In short, not all organic is created equal. The mineral density (as opposed to the blanket term of nutrient density) is highly depended upon the techniques employed. I don’t believe in hoof and horn mixture, but I do believe in everything else the BD farmers use, and it has been proven in lab tests.