CLEAN UP IN THE PRODUCE AISLE

DOES YOUR SALAD COME WITH A SIDE OF DDT? HERE’S THE 411 ON THE CLEANLINESS OF YOUR FRUITS AND VEGGIES TO HELP YOU BEST INVEST YOUR PRODUCE DOLLARS.

- Jill Schildhouse

To those of a certain age, The Dirty Dozen is an awardwinning film starring Lee Marvin about a suicide mission on a Nazi-inhabited French chateau during WWII. These days, however, the name has been cleverly repurposed by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that compiles a virtual who’s who of conventionally grown produce with the highest and lowest amounts of pesticide residue.

PESTICIDE PRIMER

Ostensibly, strawberries should provide you with tons of vitamins, minerals and fiber, but they also could secretly be delivering a hearty dose of chemicals, fungicide or even DDT to you and your family. “Conventional agriculture continues to use large quantities of toxic pesticides, and USDA and FDA researchers detect residue on many of the fruits and vegetables they test,” says Alexis Temkin, Ph.D., EWG toxicologist.

What’s more, those 40,900 produce samples are not carefully plucked from a choice vine and tested for residue in the field. They are actually tested after they have been purchased, brought home and washed in preparation for consumption. “You are what you eat,” quips Vincent Esposito, MS, DC, health coach and nutrition specialist. “In the case of food grown in synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, this could not be more true, becauseas consumers, we end up ingesting these residues.”