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What’s In Your Food? New Tool Reveals Pesticide Residues
Janelle Sorensen
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The average American child gets over 5 servings of pesticide residues from their food and water each day. Most babies are born with pesticides already coursing through their veins, passed from mother to child during fetal development. Pesticides are in our food, our water, and even our air.
Now there’s an easy way to reduce your exposure.
What’s On My Food? is a new searchable database of common foods and the pesticide residues that have been found on them according to USDA studies. In addition to identifying which residues have been found, it also shows the toxicology for each chemical, making this information easily searchable for the first time.
Beyond the Dirty Dozen most contaminated fruits and veggies, you can now examine a wide variety of foods (produce, nuts, meats, dairy, and more) and make sure you’re feeding the cleanest foods to your family. For example, if you can’t afford organic blueberries, you could buy frozen blueberries which have 19 pesticide residues compared to the 48 found on fresh. Or, perhaps simply knowing there are that many pesticides on such a tiny berry may compel you to invest in organic or find an even cleaner fruit option.
Just keep in mind when you’re using this tool that it’s meant to open up transparency about pesticide use, not make parents neurotic about food consumption. Reduce exposure as best as you can, but keep your main focus on a healthy diet based on diverse, whole foods.
Use the tool, share it with others, live healthier today.
Posted by Erin O. on 06/29 at 02:13 PM
I have been buying organic Fuji apples from Costco for almost a year and last week I got lazy and bought regular Fuji’s at the grocery store. Even after washing I could still taste chemicals. BLECH. Next time I’ll make the drive to Costco. Thanks for sharing this info!
Posted by Stephen on 06/28 at 05:21 PM
If you have little ones please please use only organic household cleaners, organic grass fertilizers and try organic milk. They are worth it! Also STAY AWAY from any artificial food colors and dyes as well as any hydrogenated oils! :-)