Partial transcript from episode: The Dirty Dozen & The Clean 15 - How to avoid pesticides on a plant-based diet
If you haven't visited the environmental working group's website, it's pretty spectacular for people who are looking to live a chemical free and cleaner lifestyle. I mean, their dirty dozen list is a compilation of 46 fruits and vegetables that were included in their analysis. And the first dozen were the ones that were most contaminated with pesticides. So there they are the dirty dozen, but they further list another 19 items from which testing data USDA from and FDA was used. These items didn't make the dirty dozen list, but they also contain a fair amount of pesticides. So they're sort of like the middle range.
And then my favorite part of their yearly announcement is the clean 15 list. And these are the food items that had the lowest amounts of pesticide residues according to the group's analysis and the most recent USDA data that they've used. So the clean 15 lists includes carrots, watermelon, sweet potatoes, yay, mangoes, mushrooms, cabbage, Kiwi, honeydew, melons, asparagus, which I love frozen sweet peas, another yay from me because I use frozen sweet peas in so many things, papaya, onions, pineapple, sweet corn, and yes, avocados, my favorite.
So when I'm shopping and I'm trying to be frugal, you know, with my money, I'll buy all organic if the items are on the dirty dozen list and I'll save some money buying the regular products if they're on the clean 15 list. And I do literally have those lists on my phone to use as a reference when I'm in the store shopping for my groceries. I mean, if you see me shopping in the store, my nose is to my phone practically the entire time because I'm checking out ingredients and I'm checking out my dirty dozen list and my clean 15 list, but in any event, it is really helpful.
And the Environmental Working Group also offers the same lists on these cute little bag tags that they'll send you if you make a small donation to the group, which, you know, really is worth it because it's a great group and they do provide some very valuable information. In fact, when I was formulating the recipes for our line of personal care products from the EWG Skin Deep database for information and body safe ratings of specific ingredients used in skincare products, I mean, my goal was to always produce items that were body safe and eco friendly, and I would not have been able to do that easily without free access to their vast database of information. So I mean, it's helpful in a lot of different areas, not just food. So check that out.
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