Which fruits and vegetables are best for juicing? The cleanest ones, which are free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other chemicals that are used to control pests and help insure commercial crop quantities. Do you want a helping of chemicals in your juice? If not, juice foods which are free of chemicals or choose to juice organic foods which are grown without chemicals. Washing and peeling foods which contain pesticides does not always remove the chemicals. Many pesticides are absorbed into plants’ flesh and interior meat making them impossible to totally clean.
The Environmental Work Group (EWG), a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C. publishes a list of the cleanest and dirtiest fruits and vegetables. In particular, EWG analyzed 87,000 pesticide tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. EWG ranked 47 fruits and vegetables, from dirtiest to cleanest, using six different measures of chemical contamination, including the total amount of pesticides and the number of different pesticides on the food that was sampled.
Below is a list of the top 15 cleanest and dirtiest fruits and vegetables:
| |
Cleanest Fruits and Vegetables |
Dirtiest Fruits and Vegetables |
| #1 |
Onion |
Peach |
| #2 |
Avocado |
Apple |
| #3 |
Sweet Corn - Frozen |
Sweet Bell Pepper |
| #4 |
Pineapple |
Celery |
| #5 |
Mango |
Nectarine |
| #6 |
Asparagus |
Strawberries |
| #7 |
Sweet Peas - Frozen |
Cherries |
| #8 |
Kiwi |
Kale |
| #9 |
Cabbage |
Lettuce |
| #10 |
Eggplant |
Grapes - Imported |
| #11 |
Papaya |
Carrot |
| #12 |
Watermelon |
Pear |
| #13 |
Broccoli |
Collard Greens |
| #14 |
Tomato |
Spinach |
| #15 |
Sweet Potato |
Potato |
Do you juice some of the dirtiest fruits and vegetables? Next time choose organic, especially when juicing some of the top 15 dirty fruits and vegetables.
Published 3/2/2010 12:00:00 AM
Tags: Pesticides