Superfoods like blueberries, spinach, and kale contain dangerous chemicals.
“Superfoods” such as blueberries, spinach and kale, which are included in the “dirty dozen”, produce fruits and vegetables with a lot of pesticides.
Blueberries, spinach, and kale—each commonly considered one of the healthiest foods to eat—have been named among the foods with the most pesticides.
Environmental Working Group (EWG), based in Washington. COLUMBIA REGIONnamed its “dirty dozen” food items this week, a dubious honor reserved only for fruits and vegetables in America with lots of chemicals.
Along with antioxidant-rich blueberries and leafy greens, there are other favorite snacks like strawberries, grapes, apples, nectarines, pears, and cherries.
Peppers and green beans, which are often found in health-conscious recipes, also made the list of shame.
The EWG looked at 46 staple foods for its study and found that 75 percent of freshly grown foods in America contain leftovers. harmful pesticides. Ingestion by humans can damage the nervous system or even cause cancer.
The EWG found that more than 90% of samples of strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines and grapes contained at least two pesticides.
More than 250 different pesticides have been found on fruits and vegetables, some of which have been banned in the US or Europe due to their effects on human health.
For example, the neurotoxic organophosphate insecticide acephate, which was banned from use on green beans in 2011, was found in six percent of green bean samples.
The insecticide is listed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a possible human carcinogen.
Both blueberries and green beans contain alarming levels of organophosphate insecticides.
They can damage the human nervous system and are especially toxic to the developing brains of children.
Nearly 10 percent of blueberry samples contained the pesticide phosmet, and 9 percent had traces of malathion.
Both are organophosphorus compounds, and malathion was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
More than 90 percent of samples of strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines and grapes contained at least two pesticides.
More than 50 pesticides have been found on every crop on the Dirty Dozen list except cherries.
Cabbage, collard greens and mustard greens, as well as hot and sweet peppers, contained the most pesticides of all crops – 103 and 101.
The EWG compiled its “dirty dozen” and “clean 15” lists – fruits and vegetables with the least detectable pesticides – using data from 46,569 samples.
In the Net 15 list, less than two percent of samples of avocados and sweet corn had detectable levels of pesticides.
The data comes from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which cleans or sanitizes its product samples before testing, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which only gets rid of dirt before testing.
Even after these steps, 251 pesticides remained on the products.
The list of 15 clean foods contains tested fruits and vegetables that have very low or no traces of pesticides.
EWG toxicologist Alexis Tiomkin said: “Despite an abundance of scientific evidence linking pesticide exposure to serious health problems, a potentially toxic cocktail of the chemicals continues to taint many of the non-organic fruits and vegetables that consumers eat.”
The EWG emphasized that people should continue to eat fruits and vegetables, even if they are not organic.
Mr Tiomkin said: “Everyone – adults and children – should be eating more fruits and vegetables, whether organic or not. A diet rich in foods has many health benefits.”