The Clean 15--Foods You Don't Need to Buy Organic

From WalletPop.

"Organic foods get a lot of buzz for their lack of chemical pesticides, but you can save money and avoid pesticides by buying certain conventionally grown fruits and vegetables found in the regular supermarket produce aisle.

To help prioritize your food dollars, here's the current list of the "Clean 15" - the best conventionally grown produce to buy, as determined by the Environmental Working Group upon examining the U.S. Department of Agriculture's produce-sampling tests.

You can slash your pesticide consumption - by nearly 80% - by eating the following "clean" conventionally grown choices while also avoiding the 12 most-contaminated fruits and vegetables, the organization says.

You can feel comfortable buying the following fruits and vegetables in the the regular produce section since they're lowest in pesticides:

1. Onions
2. Avocado
3. Sweet corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet potato
15. Honeydew melon

You can download a wallet guide version or iPhone app here.

It's not that the "Clean 15" always contain no residue of fungicides or insect killers - it's just that the best choices often don't. Onions, asparagus, sweet corn, pineapple, mango and avocado had no detectable pesticide residues on at least 90% of produce sampled by the government, according to EWG. Most cabbage sampled (82%) had no detectible pesticides. Ditto for eggplant (75.4%).

Bottom line: You can save money by buying the fruits and veggies on this list and putting your savings toward produce that is more important to purchase organically if you want to limit how much pesticide you inadvertently consume. Among other reasons, many pesticides disrupt male hormones, new research shows. If money is no object, go ahead and always buy organic.

"If customers are concerned about pesticides in general," EWG spokesman Alex Formuzis tells Consumer Ally, "then they should buy organic for as many foods as possible."

In contrast, there is also a "Dirty Dozen" list of foods you ABSOLUTELY WANT TO BUY organic on the website. I made my own by taking their complete list of 100 foods, editing out the foods we don't eat, and re-forming the list ranks. Now I have my own Dirty Dozen List and Clean 15 list in my head. The Wenchypoo Magic 8 foods have also taken this info into account.

Wenchypoo Magic 8 list: berries (blue-, straw-, and black-), plums, navel oranges, broccoli, carrots, and red peppers, along with cuts of lean meats and dark salad greens (kale, spinach, chard, collards, and romaine). Only the plums, navel oranges, and broccoli should be bought commercially--everything else should be organic if possible, home-grown is best (to control pesticides). Sprouts can be used to substitute for leafy greens, and can be commercial if UNTREATED seeds are used to grow them--they require no pesticides if grown indoors.

General rule of thumb when choosing organic or not: if you're going to eat it with the skin on, and it has a thin skin, go with organic. If you aren't eating the skin, and the skin gets discarded (as in oranges or avocados), you can go commercial--no need for organic. Broccoli is an exception to this rule--since pests don't attack the broccoli flowers, and attack only the leaves, broccoli usually doesn't get doused with pesticides, because bugs don't like the taste of it. Leaves get peeled off before it comes to market.

Collards are related to broccoli--even though you'd think bugs hate broccoli, so they must hate collards, it doesn't work that way. Bugs LOVE broccoli LEAVES, so they also love collard leaves, making pesticides necessary. Go with organic collards or sprout them indoors--I'm telling you this from gardening experience.

So why is cabbage on the Clean 15 list if bugs love broccoli and collard leaves? Cabbage grows as a head, and the outer bug-eaten leaves get removed before it comes to market. Collards are essentially a non-heading cabbage, with no outer leaves to remove.

But plums are thin-skinned, and are generally eaten with the skin on--why not organic for those? Plum trees need no spraying, that's why. Bugs hate the trees.