Buying Organic - The Dirty Dozen and The Clean Fifteen.

Avoiding harmful pesticide residue is something we advise all our clients to do by switching to organic where possible. To make our lives easier and our shopping more cost effective the Environmental Working Group (EWG) put together a list of the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. As you may have worked out the Dirty Dozen are the foods which had the highest amount of pesticide residue and therefore are the ones we want to make sure we buy organic. The Clean Fifteen are the foods with the lowest pesticide residue and therefore safer to buy non-organic.

Every year the EWG retest food and publish a new list with the most up to date information. 2017's list is as follows:

The Dirty Dozen:

1. Strawberries
   
2. Spinach
   
3. Nectarines
   
4. Apples
   
5. Peaches
   
6. Pears
   
7. Cherries
   
8. Grapes
   
9. Celery
   
10. Tomatoes
    
11. Sweet Bell Peppers
    
12. Potatoes
    

The Clean 15:

1. Sweet Corn
   
2. Avocados
   
3. Pineapples
   
4. Cabbage
   
5. Onions
   
6. Sweet Peas (Frozen)
   
7. Papayas
   
8. Asparagus
   
9. Mangos
   
10. Aubergine
    
11. Honeydew Melon
    
12. Kiwi
    
13. Cantaloupe
    
14. Cauliflower
    
15. Grapefruit
    

If you would like to see the full report you can read it here on the EWG website.

If you would like to read more about why we recommend organic check out this blog post we shared in celebration of Organic September.