I will tell you at our house we do not use fluoride toothpastes, we use a RO system on our water and only drink filtered, non-fluoridated water.  But twice a year, I do allow my children to have a fluoride treatment at the dentist. I know… doesn’t seem to make sense right? Well, besides the fact that our dentist is family and firmly believes in his medical training, and I try to not rock the boat too much when it comes to refusing his recommendations, I also believe that there is a huge difference in a twice a year protection treatment and a daily exposure.  My kids bodies will bounce back from a twice annual poisoning…but it will be a lot more work for their bodies to try to keep up daily.

I also believe that fluoridation is another “backward” treatment offered by the medical community.  Science has no doubts that diet makes all the difference in the world when it comes to dental health. So why don’t we put a little more training in nutrition and health in the dental schools, in the media, in peoples homes? Then we wouldn’t need to mass drug our society in the water supply. If we supported our parents a little more, by not bombarding children from all sides with advertisements of pure junk foods, and we didn’t tell them in every way that we can that healthy food is yucky, then maybe these same parents would have the courage to stand up to their children and make decisions based on the health and well-being of their children instead of what was fast, easy, and likable for kids.

Anyway…I had a friend who is a dentist ask me what my position was on fluoridation the other day. He was very non-confrontational and said he sincerely wanted to understand my position and learn more about what I knew. I realized I didn’t know nearly enough about this topic. My basic philosophy is to keep my body as clear from chemicals as possible on all fronts so naturally I would steer clear of the chemically produced fluoride additives as well… but I clearly needed to read and learn more about this. Then this morning I woke up to a very informative, although I admit very anti-fluoride article by Mike Adams, someone I trust very much although I cringe at his reporting style that can tend to be very sarcastic.

So, I wanted to share that article with you and encourage you to read up more about the topic. There is obviously many pieces of information on the web, but it is not all reputable so beware of “opinion” articles.

Click here to read the article!

* By Ward, MH, BA Kilfoy, PJ Weyer, KE Anderson, AR Folsom and JR Cerhand
Environmental Health News, June 29, 2010

Nitrates in drinking water and food increase risk of thyroid cancer and thyroid hormone disease.

Long-term exposure to nitrates through food and water may increase a woman’s risk of thyroid disease, finds a study of older women in Iowa. Public water supplies contaminated with nitrates increased the risk of thyroid cancer in the women. Eating nitrates from certain vegetables was linked to increases in thyroid cancer and hypothyroidism, one type of thyroid disease.

This is the first study to show a link between nitrates and thyroid cancer in people, although nitrates have been shown to cause thyroid tumors in animal studies.

Thyroid cancer is the eighth most common cancer among women. In the United States, the incidence of thyroid cancer has increased steadily since 1980.

Nitrate is a common contaminant of drinking water, particularly in agricultural areas where nitrogen fertilizers are used. High rates of fertilizer application may also increase the natural nitrate levels found in certain vegetables, such as lettuce and root crops.

Researchers from the National Institute of Health studied 21,977 older women in Iowa who had used the same water supply for more than 10 years. They determined cancer incidence using the state health registry. They estimated nitrate intake from public drinking water sources using a public database of nitrate measurements. Dietary intake was measured through questionnaires. Since nitrate levels in private well water were not available, all private well users were combined into one group.

The results show a nearly three-fold increase in thyroid cancer risk for women with more than five year’s use of a public water supply that had nitrate levels of 5 milligrams per liter (mg/L) or above. The maximum contaminant level of nitrate in drinking water is currently set at 10 mg/L in the United States. There was no evidence of elevated thyroid cancer risk among private well users.

By Sylvia Booth Hubbard

We’re addicted to soft drinks. According to the National Soft Drink Association, Americans drink more than 600 servings (12 ounces each) every year, and consumption is approaching a quart each day for every man, woman, and child. Males between the ages of 12 and 29 guzzle one-half gallon of “liquid candy” every day. Supersizing a soft drink to 32 ounces is a quarter of the recommended total daily calories for the average woman.

All of that soda is taking a great toll on our health. Obesity is the most obvious effect. During the past 30 years, as our consumption of soft drinks has increased, the rate of obesity has soared.

In fact, Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard endocrinologist, said that sweetened drinks are the only specific food that clinical research has directly linked to weight gain.

“Highly concentrated starches and sugars promote overeating, and the granddaddy of them all is sugar-sweetened beverages,” Ludwig told CNN.

The sugar provides huge amounts of calories, but also creates a vicious cycle. “It’s rapidly absorbed, which raises blood sugar and in effect causes the body to panic,” Ludwig said. When the body releases insulin to metabolize the sugar, blood sugar drops. The body responds by releasing a hormone called ghrelin, which causes hunger and provokes us to eat even more.

Sodas can cause other health problems including:

• Diabetes. Not only does being overweight increase the odds of developing Type 2 diabetes, some researchers at Rutgers believe that high-fructose corn syrup, an ingredient in most sugar-sweetened sodas, may start a series of events in the body that leads to diabetes.

• Osteoporosis. Phosphoric acid, which give drinks their “bite,” leaches calcium from the bones.

• GI problems.”Sodas contain an array of chemical acids as additives, such as acetic, fumaric, gluconic, and phosphoric acids, all of them synthetically produced,” Dr. Judith Valentine told the Global Healing Center. “Drinking sodas, especially on an empty stomach, can upset the fragile acid-alkaline balance of the stomach and other gastric linings, creating a continuous acid environment. This prolonged acid environment can lead to inflammation of the stomach and duodenal lining which becomes quite painful. Over the long term, it can lead to gastric lining erosion.”

• Dental problems. Phosphoric acid, which causes bone loss, also causes tooth enamel to erode.”Dentists are reporting complete loss of the enamel on the front teeth in teenage boys and girls who habitually drink sodas,” said Valentine.

• Brain disorders. More than 92 side effects are associated with aspartame, a sugar substitute used in diet sodas. They include brain tumors, emotional disorders, and epileptic seizures.

• Pancreatic cancer. Drinking two or more soft drinks a week increases the risk of developing pancreatic cancer by two-fold compared to people who do not drink soft drinks, says a recent report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. “The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth,” said Mark Pereira, Ph.D., and senior author of the study.

• Reproductive health. Additives in soft drinks can interfere with the body’s delicate hormone balance. And a recent Danish study found that men who drank a quart or more of cola daily had sperm counts 30 percent lower than in those men who didn’t drink soft drinks.

• High blood pressure. A study found fructose — a form of sugar found in soft drinks and junk food — raises blood pressure.

• Kidney stones. The same phosphate that rots teeth and leaches calcium from the body has been proposed as a contributing factor in the formation of kidney stones. And a study published in the journal Epidemiology found that drinking two or more colas daily — regular or artificially sweetened — doubled the risk of chronic kidney disease.

That said, I realize that’s not always realistic for all of us all of the time. We like to have convenience foods to help us deal with our time crunches, and that’s OK. But I recommend that you read the labels. Choose packaged foods made with real-food ingredients over those with factory-created components.

Be a smart consumer and look for things that are going to help your body thrive. When you pick something up, ask yourself the question: “Is this something my great grandmother would have eaten?” If the answer is “no,” you should probably put it back. Things like frozen blueberries or canned black beans can still be good for you, as long as they don’t contain a bunch of unhealthy and unnecessary ingredients.

STOCKING A HEALTHY PANTRY

Now that you know what to avoid, go to your cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer and toss out any foods that contain the ingredients on the avoid list.

Here’s a list of foods that you can replace in your pantry with healthier foods.

· Refined White Sugar – replace with stevia, agave nectar, honey, brown rice syrup, or Rapadura Whole Cane Organic Unrefined Sugar

· Margarine – replace with organic real butter

· Table Salt – replace with natural Celtic Sea Salt

· Skippy, Jif or other Peanut Butter – replace with natural peanut butter with only two ingredients: peanuts and salt.

· Canned veggies/fruit – eat fresh fruits and veggies

· Soft drinks – good clean water, sparkling water, herbal teas

· Pasta – replace with brown rice pasta, quinoa pasta, or whole wheat pasta if your not sensitive to gluten or wheat.

· White Flour – replace with 100% whole wheat flour, or whole wheat pastry flour or other non-gluten flours.

· White Bread – replace with a good 100% whole grain bread. The ingredient list should be short with only a few ingredients such as whole wheat flour, yeast, honey, salt.

· Crackers – replace with whole grain crackers – try Ak-Mak, Mary’s Gone Crackers, or Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheats

· Breakfast Cereals – Go with a whole grain one, look for short ingredient lists.

Written by Dee McCaffrey, CDC

It’s easy to ignore the calories in drinks for the simple reason that drinks tend not to fill you up. One reason so many diets fail may be that dieters don’t restrict the liquid calories they consume. Although sugary and alcoholic drinks can make you fat, they don’t necessarily make you feel sated, so you just keep drinking while eating, taking in almost as many liquid calories as you do calories from food.

In fact, studies show that while food calories “register” in the brain, limiting the amount of food you desire, liquid calories somehow don’t register. As you eat solid food, nerves in the stomach and intestine release regulators that tell the brain you’re full, while hunger hormones (called ghrelin) become suppressed. But liquids move more quickly through the digestive system and fail to trigger the same signals.

“When the number and type of calories are the same, the calories in liquid form won’t suppress ghrelin as effectively as if the same calories were in solid form,” explains Dr. David E. Cummings of the University of Washington.

As I’ve written before, overall caloric consumption has been steadily increasing over the past three decades, with a concomitant increase in obesity rates. By 2003, the average person consumed 523 more calories on a daily basis than the average person consumed in 1970 — and beverages account for about half of those added calories! Consider that drink portion sizes have increased from an average of 13 ounces to 20 ounces. Look at the explosion of high-calorie sweet drinks — especially coffee drinks — the lattes and cappuccinos that so many of us unthinkingly down daily. Consider all the sports drinks and flavored vitamin waters that seem so innocent — but that add plenty of calories and not much else. (The Center for Science in the Public Interest has a current suit filed against Coca Cola for making “unsubstantiated and deceptive” advertising claims that Vitamin Water offers health benefits.) Think about the fact that red wine has become standard daily fare in many households that eschewed wine a few decades ago. It’s not just about soda anymore.

When people drink more, they usually don’t compensate by moderating the amount of food they eat, according to a 2007 study. The study found that when served an 18-ounce drink, subjects drank more than when served 12 ounces — in other words, they drank what was given to them no matter the size and no matter what type of drink it was — and they ate the same amount of food no matter the calorie-count or volume of their beverage. Similarly, the Harvard Nurses’ Study of 50,000 women found that when subjects drank one sugar-sweetened beverage per day, they didn’t regulate their food intake to compensate, but rather, consumed an average of 358 extra calories daily and gained a significant amount of weight.

Here are some calorie facts about popular drinks:

A bottle of vitamin-water contains 125 calories
An 8-oz glass of red wine has 170 calories
A 16-oz café latte has 260 calories
A 12 oz fruit smoothie has 300 calories
A Starbucks frappuccino contains 470 calories.

Of course, not all liquid calories are created equal. Some drinks, particularly sodas and sports drinks, add not only calories, but typically also deliver nasty amounts of sugar, sodium, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colorings and preservatives, pesticides (a 2008 study in the UK found that soft drinks contained 300 times the level of pesticides allowed in tap water), phosphoric acid, chemical additives such as benzene (known to cause leukemia), and caffeine. The cumulative effect of drinking such beverages extends far beyond expanding the waistline — soft drinks expedite the development of diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, hypertension, kidney disease, and so on.

While diet sodas may look like a better deal with their zero-calorie offerings, the dangerous artificial sweeteners they contain have been linked to a host of malignant conditions including breast cancer, lymphoma, shrunken thymus glands, enlarged liver and kidneys, miscarriages, Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia, lupus, seizures, memory loss, and tremors. They offer you nothing nutritionally, plus, as I’ve written before, they ultimately make you fatter than their sugared counterparts, in spite of the lack of calories.

Fruit and vegetable juices, on the other hand, contain over 100 calories a glass, but if they’re freshly squeezed and organic, they’re a boon to your health, a marvelous way to get nutritious calories. And fruit smoothies, while laden with calories, fill you up because of their thickness, so they don’t necessarily have the same fattening effect as, for instance, a mocha latte or even a glass of lemonade made from concentrate (with a startling 791 calories per 12-oz glass). A smoothie can be a satisfying lunch, but not so much a glass of lemonade.

Ultimately, it’s best not to drink with meals at all since excessive liquids dilute your digestive juices and enzymes. But when drinking between meals for hydration, pure water is best — especially if you’re watching your weight. The point is that it pays to remain aware of what you drink and in what quantity you drink it if you want to remain svelte and healthy. Keep in mind it only takes 12 extra calories a day to add one pound a year — a frightening concept if you’re having a 470-calorie frappucino every day.

Jon Barron

Statistics shows that Americans drink more soda than ever before. They account for more than 25 percent of all drinks consumed in the United States. More than 15 billion gallons were sold in 2000 — about one 12-ounce can per day for every man, woman and child.

But here’s some information that may keep you away from opening the can:

1. Extra pounds

Soda is a significant contributor to obesity. Drinking a single can a day of sugary drinks translates to more than a pound of weight gain every month. And diet soda is just as likely to cause weight gain as regular, or even more — it may sound counterintuitive, but people who drink diet soft drinks actually don’t lose weight. Artificial sweeteners induce a whole set of physiologic and hormonal responses that actually make you gain weight.

2. Liver damage

Soda damages your liver. Consumption of too many soft drinks puts you under increased risk for liver cirrhosis similar to the increased risk faced by chronic alcoholics.
3. Tooth decay

Soda dissolves tooth enamel. Soft drinks are responsible for doubling or tripling the incidence of tooth decay. Soda’s acidity is even worse for teeth than the solid sugar found in candy.

4. Kidney stones and chronic kidney disease

Colas of all kinds are well known for their high phosphoric acid content, a substance that changes the urine in a way that promotes kidney stone formation. Drinking one quart (less than three 12-ounce cans) of soda per week may increase your risk of developing kidney stones by 15 percent.

5. Diabetes

Anything that promotes weight gain increases the risk of diabetes. Drinking soda also stresses your body’s ability to process sugar. Some scientists now suspect that this may explain why the number of Americans with type 2 diabetes has tripled from 6.6 million in 1980 to 20.8 million today.

6. Heartburn & acid reflux

Heavy consumption of soda is a strong predictor of heartburn. Many carbonated beverages are very acidic. They also deliver a lot of air in the form of carbon dioxide, which can cause distension of your stomach. And that distension appears to be associated with more reflux.
7. Soft drinks = Soft Bones = Osteoporosis

Soft drinks containing phosphoric acid are definitely linked to osteoporosis (a weakening of your skeletal structure) because they lead to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in your blood. When phosphate levels are high and calcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of your bones.

8. Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Experts have reasons to believe that overconsumption of soda leads to an increase in blood pressure. It doesn’t matter if the soda is regular or diet.

9. Heart disease

Heavy soda drinkers are more likely to develop risk factors for heart disease. Research shows that drinking more than one soft drink a day is associated with an increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome — a group of symptoms such as central obesity, elevated blood pressure, elevated fasting blood sugar, elevated fasting triglycerides, and low levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol. Having three or more of the symptoms increases your risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
10. Impaired digestion (gastrointestinal distress)

Gastrointestinal distress includes increased stomach acid levels requiring acid inhibitors, and moderate to severe gastric inflammation with possible stomach lining erosion. Drinking sodas, especially on an empty stomach, can upset the fragile acid-alkaline balance of your stomach and other gastric lining, creating a continuous acid environment. This prolonged acid environment can lead to inflammation of your stomach and duodenal lining.

Sources:
Squidoo January 23, 2009

Sources:
Advertising Age January 15, 2009

A drink with as little as one gram of lemon grass contains enough citral to prompt cancer cells to commit suicide in the test tube.

Israeli researchers find way to make cancer cells self-destruct
-Ben Gurion University

At first, Benny Zabidov, an Israeli agriculturalist who grows greenhouses full of lush spices on a pastoral farm in Kfar Yedidya in the Sharon region, couldn’t understand why so many cancer patients from around the country were showing up on his doorstep asking for fresh lemon grass. It turned out that their doctors had sent them. ‘They had been told to drink eight glasses of hot water with fresh lemon grass steeped in it on the days that they went for their radiation and chemotherapy treatments,’ Zabidov told ISRAEL21c. ‘And this is the place you go to in Israel for fresh lemon grass.’

It all began when researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev discovered last year that the lemon aroma in herbs like lemon grass kills cancer cells in vitro, while leaving healthy cells unharmed. The research team was led by Dr. Rivka Ofir and Prof. Yakov Weinstein, incumbent of the Albert Katz Chair in Cell-Differentiation and Malignant Diseases, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at BGU.

Citral is the key component that gives the lemony aroma and taste in several herbal plants such as lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus), melissa (Melissa officinalis) and verbena (Verbena officinalis.)

According to Ofir, the study found that citral causes cancer cells to ‘commit suicide: using apoptosis, a mechanism called programmed cell death.’ A drink with as little as one gram of lemon grass contains enough citral to prompt the cancer cells to commit suicide in the test tube.

The BGU investigators checked the influence of the citral on cancerous cells by adding them to both cancerous cells and normal cells that were grown in a petri dish. The quantity added in the concentrate was equivalent to the amount contained in a cup of regular tea using one gram of lemon herbs in hot water. While the citral killed the cancerous cells, the normal cells remained unharmed.

The findings were published in the scientific journal Planta Medica, which highlights research on alternative and herbal remedies. Shortly afterwards, the discovery was featured in the popular Israeli press.

Why does it work? Nobody knows for certain, but the BGU scientists have a theory. ‘In each cell in our body, there is a genetic program which causes programmed cell death. When something goes wrong, the cells divide with no control and become cancer cells. In normal cells, when the cell discovers that the control system is not operating correctly – for example, when it recognizes that a cell contains faulty genetic material following cell division – it triggers cell death,’ explains Weinstein. ‘This research may explain the medical benefit of these herbs.’

The success of their research led them to the conclusion that herbs containing citral may be consumed as a preventative measure against certain cancerous cells. As they learned of the BGU findings in the press, many physicians in Israel began to believe that while the research certainly needed to be explored further, in the meantime it would be advisable for their patients, who were looking for any possible tool to fight their condition, to try to harness the cancer-destroying properties of citral.

That’s why Zabidov’s farm – the only major grower of fresh lemon grass in Israel – has become a pilgrimage destination for these patients. Luckily, they found themselves in sympathetic hands. Zabidov greets visitors with a large kettle of aromatic lemon grass tea, a plate of cookies, and a supportive attitude. ‘My father died of cancer, and my wife’s sister died young because of cancer,’ said Zabidov. ‘So I understand what they are dealing with. And I may not know anything about medicine, but I’m a good listener. And so they tell me about their expensive painful treatments and what they’ve been through. I would never tell them to stop being treated, but it’s great that they are exploring alternatives and drinking the lemon grass tea as well.’

Zabidov knew from a young age that agriculture was his calling. At age 14, he enrolled in the Kfar Hayarok Agricultural high school. After his army service, he joined an idealistic group which headed south, in the Arava desert region, to found a new moshav (agricultural settlement) called Tsofar. ‘We were very successful; we raised fruits and vegetables, and,’ he notes with a smile, ‘We raised some very nice children.’

On a trip to Europe in the mid-80s, he began to become interested in herbs. Israel, at the time, was nothing like the trend-conscious cuisine-oriented country it is today, and the only spices being grown commercially were basics like parsley, dill, and coriander. Wandering in the Paris market, looking at the variety of herbs and spices, Zabidov realized that there was a great export potential in this niche. He brought samples back home with him, ‘which was technically illegal,’ he says with a guilty smile, to see how they would grow in his desert greenhouses. Soon, he was growing basil, oregano, tarragon, chives, sage, marjoram and melissa, and mint just to name a few.

His business began to outgrow his desert facilities, and so he decided to move north, settling in the moshav of Kfar Yedidya, an hour and a half north of Tel Aviv. He is now selling ‘several hundred kilos’ of lemon grass per week, and has signed with a distributor to package and put it in health food stores. Zabidov has taken it upon himself to learn more about the properties of citral, and help his customers learn more, and has invited medical experts to his farm to give lectures about how the citral works and why.

He also felt a responsibility to know what to tell his customers about its use. ‘When I realized what was happening, I picked up the phone and called Dr. Weinstein at Ben-Gurion University, because these people were asking me exactly the best way to consume the citral. He said to put the loose grass in hot water, and drink about eight glasses each day.’

Zabidov is pleased by the findings, not simply because it means business for his farm, but because it might influence his own health. Even before the news of its benefits were demonstrated, he and his family had been drinking lemon grass in hot water for years, ‘just because it tastes good.’

Bottled water contains disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue and pain medication

Bottles water quality investigation: 10 major brands, 38 polutants: EWG’s guide to safe drinking water

Walmart water exceeds safety limits

*     Cancer
*     Fertility problems
*     Brain tumors
*     Childhood leukemia
*     Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
*     Birth defects
*     Irritation to skin and eyes
*     Hormone or endocrine system problems
*     Nervous system damage

Those especially at risk from pesticides are children, whose bodies are still developing, along with pregnant women, whose unborn children are extremely susceptible to damage from these toxic chemicals.

Even low levels of pesticides, consumed over time, can be problematic. A study in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, for instance, found that people who had been exposed to low levels of pesticides were 1.13 times as likely to have Parkinson’s disease as those who had never been exposed.

And if you eat produce, there’s a good chance you’re being exposed. According to Hazardous Pesticides in the European Parliament, released October 2007, the eight food samples they tested, which ranged from oranges to strawberries to grapes, contained 28 different pesticide residues, with an average of almost five per fruit.

The pesticides included:

*      10 known carcinogens
*      3 neurotoxins
*      3 reproductive or developmental toxins
*      8 suspected endocrine disrupters
*      2 contaminants classified as “Highly Hazardous” by the World Health Organization

Three of the eight food samples contained pesticide residues so high they were technically illegal to sell, and the oranges contained illegally high levels of imazalil, a carcinogen. By eating just one orange, a 5-year-old would receive 70 percent of the “Acute Reference Dose” for that chemical.

Fortunately, the amount of pesticides you consume is something you can take control of.

How Can You Stop Consuming Pesticides?

There are numerous ways to make sure that the food you and your family depend on is as pesticide- and herbicide-free as possible. The top tips include:

1.      Choose organic produce and animal products (dairy, eggs, meat). By definition, organic producers must “abstain from the application of prohibited materials (including synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and sewage sludge) for 3 years prior to certification and then continually throughout their organic license.”
2.      Wash your produce thoroughly using a high-quality veggie wash. Contrary to popular belief, simply washing with water and peeling fruit and vegetables is not enough to protect yourself and your family from pesticides. It will reduce the levels somewhat, but it will not eliminate them.
3.      If you can’t buy organic, choose the least contaminated produce. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a not-for-profit environmental research organization, by avoiding the most-contaminated produce out there, and concentrating on the least contaminated instead, you can reduce your exposure to pesticides by almost 90 percent. (click here for a list of the 20 most contaminated and 20 least contaminated pesticides.)
4.      Choose organic varieties of other foods as well. Pesticide use usually centers on produce, but some studies have found wine, bread, wheat and flour products (such as pasta, pizza, cookies, cereal, and more) to contain high levels of pesticides as well.
5.      Make sure your water is pesticide-free. DEET, a chemical found in insect repellants, has been found in some drinking water supplies. The U.S. government doesn’t have standards for DEET in your water, so to find out if your water is safe you can have it independently tested to find out what, if any, contaminants exist.

Once you implement these tips, you may be wondering, will it really make an impact? According to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives, yes!

When kids switched from conventional food to organic food, their levels of pesticides became undetectable within eight to 36 hours.

“Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets,” said Chensheng Lu, the lead author of the study and a professor at Emory University’s School of Public Health.

The 20 Fruits and Veggies With the MOST Pesticides

These are the ones that you should always buy organic, if possible. If you do buy conventional versions of the following produce, please be sure to wash them thoroughly (organic produce, of course, should also be washed just in case). These are ranked in order by EWG, with the worst of the bunch, peaches, at #1.

1. Peaches
2. Apples
3. Sweet Bell Peppers
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Pears
9. Grapes (Imported)
10. Spinach
11. Lettuce
12. Potatoes
13. Carrots
14. Green Beans
15. Hot Peppers
16. Cucumbers
17. Raspberries
18. Plums
19. Grapes (Domestic)
20. Oranges

The 20 Fruits and Veggies With the LEAST Amount of Pesticides

According to EWG, the following produce has the lowest pesticide load, ranked in order with the produce with the absolute lowest pesticides first.

1. Onion
2. Avocado
3. Sweet corn (Frozen)
4. Pineapples
5. Mango
6. Asparagus
7. Sweet peas (Frozen)
8. Kiwi
9. Bananas
10. Cabbage
11. Broccoli
12. Papaya
13. Blueberries
14. Cauliflower
15. Winter Squash
16. Watermelon
17. Sweet potatoes
18. Tomatoes
19. Honeydew melon
20. Cantaloupe