Nutrition: 2018 Dirty Dozen, Clean 15 List

I routinely recommend people choose organic produce and grass fed and finished meat and dairy, wild caught fish and pasture raised poultry. I understand many people have financial constraints, particularly those families with young children and buying all organic is difficult. It is extremely important, in my opinion, especially for young children to eat the highest quality foods since they are still growing and developing in this very toxic world we live in.

I remember being on a very strict budge when my children were young and having to make decisions as to what we could buy and what we could not.

If you are unfamiliar with the Environmental Working Group, they publish a list of their “dirty dozen,” fruits and vegetables that have the most pesticides and the “clean 15,” those you can safely purchase conventionally.

I find this list really helps since you don’t have to purchase everything organic. I would suggest you only choose organic if the fruit or veggie is on the dirty dozen list and of course I would say never purchase anything genetically modified, but that has become a bit more difficult to discern.

Here’s a very quick way to know what you are purchasing if you don’t have your list with you:

Those little stickers on your produce have a 4 or 5 digit PLU code on them. If the code starts with a 9 it is organic, if it is in the 3000-4999 range, the item was conventionally grown. In the past if there was a code that began with an 8 it indicated the food was genetically modified. But that practice has been discontinued. So if you don’t purchase organic, you can’t be 100% sure it is not genetically modified.

Here is the Dirty Dozen list just released in early April in order from “dirtiest” to least dirty:

Strawberries

Spinach

Nectarines

Apples

Grapes

Peaches

Cherries

Pears

Tomatoes

Celery

Potatoes

Sweet bell peppers

This is the 2018 Clean Fifteen list:

Avocados

Sweet corn

Pineapples

Cabbage

Onions

Frozen sweet peas

Papayas

Asparagus

Mangoes

Eggplant

Honeydew melon

Kiwi

Cantaloupe

Cauliflower

Broccoli

How often do you choose organic over conventionally grown produce?

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