Does Washing Produce Eliminate Pesticides?

Video Transcript

Many clients come to me with the question that if I wash my fruits and vegetables does it wash away bacteria, pesticides and fertilizers and things like that. And I always say, well think about washing your hands and food surface, we always want to take, use that practice as a precautionary to wash away any bacteria we might have on our hands and not cross contaminate with the fruits and vegetables on our foods. However, it's a little bit different with pesticides and fertilizers and things like that. Washing just doesn't do the job because farmers are spraying and laying some of these pesticides and fertilizers on the plants and on the fruits themselves and they can actually be penetrated inside of the cores. And so, a study done by the environmental working group which includes some foods that they use according to the USDA standards, they found that apples on average have 92 percent of pesticides inside of the fruit, if they are conventional. And then, they looked at thick skins fruit such as this orange here. So you would think that since this orange has a nice thick skin on it that the pesticides wouldn't be inside but that's not necessarily true, they can penetrate through the cores and the environmental working group found that about 83 percent of pesticides can reside on the fruit after peeling the orange. However, something like an onion, they found that it has 0 percent on the average of pesticides. So, if you are concerned about pesticides and fertilizers and things like that being in your food, you can go just ahead and eat organic or you can do some research or talk to your dietitian about which fruits and vegetables have highest percentage of pesticides and fertilizers and things like that inside of the food.

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