Veggies with highest pesticides

Lately, my wife and I made lot of changes to our way of living. We are adopting a greener lifestyle. This is one advantage of living in California. People are more conscious of the effect they have on the environment. There is lot of awareness and education on these issues.

Few days ago, I spent a week at my brother's house in Nashville, TN. My brother lives in a relatively upscale apartment. But I was surprised to learn that the apartment doesn't have separate bins for general trash, plastic, aluminium, newspapers etc. So, I felt that other than California and few select cities, the general population still needs a lot of catching up to do with regards to environmentally conscious lifestyle.

One big change my wife and I brought in to our life is purchasing most of our vegetable from local farmer's market. And as far as possible, going organic.

We mainly shop at Sunnyvale Farmer's Market and occassionally at Mountain View Farmer's Market. After learning many things from various places about how vegetables are grown, we decided to go with local producers and as pesticides free as possible.

For different reasons, not all folks have the luxury of going to Farmer's Market. For them, they should be aware of few things they buy at local grocery stores. Particularly, the veggies they purchase.

Recently, I read an article on CNN called Dirty Dozen about twelve veggies that have highest amount of pesticides in them.

Here is a list of these veggies:

Celery

Peaches

Strawberries

Apples

Domestic blueberries

Nectarines

Sweet bell peppers

Spinach, kale and collard greens

Cherries

Potatoes

Imported grapes

Lettuce

There is also a list of fifteen veggies/fruits that are pretty clean of the pesticides. Mainly because they have thick outer skin.

Onions

Avocados

Sweet corn

Pineapples

Mango

Sweet peas

Asparagus

Kiwi fruit

Cabbage

Eggplant

Cantaloupe

Watermelon

Grapefruit

Sweet potatoes

Sweet onions

Be aware of these veggies the next time you shop.