The Dirty Dozen. Vegetables, that is.

The Environmental Working Group has a nifty Shoppers Guide to Pesticides, a wallet size card you can download for free, print and carry with you when you are shopping.  Get it here .  It shows the 12 worst supermarket veggies in terms of pesticide residues, and the 15 cleanest.  The rankings are based on tens of thousands of tests on supermarket produce, from 2000-2008, conducted by the USDA and FDA.  Their data shows that people who consume foods from the "Dirty Dozen" every day, eat an average of 10 pesticides every day.  Those who eat primarily from the "Clean Fifteen", consume an average of 2 or less pesticides a day.

The best choice of course is organic or all natural, where you get ZERO pesticides, but there remain problems of supply, access, and price.  So if you have no other choices, avoid the "Dirty Dozen" like the chemicalized plague they are, and dine on the Clean Fifteen.  In the meantime, start your own garden so you have convenient access to clean organic foods in your own back yard (or front yard, for that matter).

The Dirty Dozen
The worst polluted are at the top of the list.

Celery
Peaches
Strawberries
Apples
Blueberries
Nectarines
Bell Peppers
Spinach
Kale
Cherries
Potatoes
Grapes (imported)

The Clean Fifteen
The least polluted are at the top of the list.

Onions
Avocado
Sweet corn
Pineapple
Mangoes
Sweet peas
Asparagus
Kiwi
Cabbage
Eggplant
Canteloupe
Watermelon
Grapefruit
Sweet potato
Honeydew melon

Backyard farm business is booming.

Here's an interesting twist on home gardening -- in many cities, a growing number of businesses offer to start backyard vegetables gardens -- and then maintain them -- for urban residents.  They estimate the payback time for the customer is 2 years, which is not a bad return on the money. Here's the skinny from Global Guerillas -- Business Dynamics of Backyard Farms -- which includes links to many such businesses in LA, Vancouver, Portland, Atlanta, etc.

Heads up on new report on chemicals in the food supply

The New York Times reports this morning -- New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer -- that the President's Cancer Panel, one of the most prestigious committees in medicine, will issue a new report warning on the dangers of chemicals in the economy and the food supply.  The present members of the panel were appointed by President Bush, and the panel itself has been in existence since 1971.  Among other recommendations, the report suggests:

+ Eating organic foods,
+ Not using plastics in microwaves,
+ Avoiding BPA,
+ Greater scrutiny of plastics presently in use.

The panel is particularly concerned about the impacts of chemicals on pregnant women and their unborn babies.  It notes that babies are born "pre-polluted -- the blood of the umbilical cords of newborn babies contains more than 300 chemicals foreign to the human body.

This of course isn't news to some of us, but it is interesting that the weight of evidence is starting to impact the mainstream of scientific and medical discussion.

It's about time.