Pesticides are a bit of a dirty word in some circles, but do consumers actually have anything to fear from pesticide residues in their apples?
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) puts apples right at the top of their 2013 “
Pesticides are a bit of a dirty word in some circles, but do consumers actually have anything to fear from pesticide residues in their apples?
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) puts apples right at the top of their 2013 “Dirty Dozen List” as the most “contaminated” fruit. For the average consumer this can be scary, as it sure seems like a good idea to lower your pesticide intake, right? The truth is you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about!
Consider this: the average adult could consume well over 500 apples a day, and those apples could have the highest pesticide residue recorded by the USDA and it would still have zero effect! You can do the calculations for yourself at www.safefruitsandveggies.com and learn how many of any fruit any consumer (man, woman, teen or child) can safely consume. The take-home message is that you’d have to eat far more produce than is humanly possible to experience the slightest negative health effect.
A consumer might be concerned to hear one piece of fruit has ten times the pesticides as another, though in truth, the “ten times” stat is meaningless because it’s still less than 1% the amount that would cause any effect. It all depends on the dose – virtually everything, even coffee and salt, are toxic at high levels! We’ve previously discussed how easy it is to use scare tactics when it comes to what we eat and drink. Hundreds of people happily signed a petition to ban water just because it was referred to by its scarier sounding technical name, dihydrogen monoxide.
Even if you’re still a bit leery of pesticides despite these facts, consider the much greater health risk of cutting out p