Are You Eating These High Pesticide Fruits?

The many pesticides and herbicides that are used to grow crops can all be extremely detrimental to human health, animal health, and the health of the planet. Therefore, it’s important to be aware of the risks, especially when it comes to what you eat. There’s a lot of produce out there that’s contaminated with high amounts of pesticides, so purchasing those foods in organic forms will be vitally important. What are some of the high pesticide fruits that you should avoid purchasing if there aren’t organic options available? A few of them are listed below.

Strawberries

When it comes to high pesticide fruits, strawberries are terrible. The EWG utilized data from the USDA to conclude that conventional strawberries, which were tested in 2009 and in 2014, contain almost six pesticides in each sample. These include chemicals that can disrupt your hormones and cause cancer and other health problems.

Other Fruits and Vegetables to Avoid

A good rule to follow is to purchase soft-skinned fruits in their organic form. Also, any fruits whose skins you will consume rather than peel off and throw away should only be purchased organic. Here are few of the other fruits that you should avoid purchasing if they are grown conventionally: nectarines, apples, peaches, pears, cherries, grapes, and all varieties of tomatoes. Nearly 100% of the apples, peaches, and nectarines used as samples ended up testing positive for pesticide residues, and just a single grape could contain multiple pesticide residues. As you can see, eating these fruits on a regular basis, even if you’re just using them in a smoothie, could do quite a bit of harm over time.

A Word About Spinach

Even though this list is focused on fruits, it’s important to note that, although spinach is super healthy for you, if you’re purchasing conventional spinach, it could be doing more harm than good. New data is proving that conventional spinach actually has more pesticide residue, by weight, when compared with other produce. Also ¾ of the samples that were tested were contaminated with a neurotoxic pest killer that’s banned in Europe. When compared with tests from eight years ago, spinach now has a lot more pesticide residue than before. Now that you know some of the high pesticide fruits that you should avoid purchasing unless they’re available in organic forms, you can take an extra step every time you go shopping to make the right choices for your health.