Healthytarian Minutes with holistic teacher Evita Ochel. This episode shares about the importance of eating organic foods and how to make it work with the help of the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce.

Learn how to eat an optimal diet for your health and weight with the Eat Real Food: Whole-Food, Plant-Based Eating online video program.

Video Transcript:

Eating high quality food, such as organic food, which is food grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides is essential for more health and nutrition benefits, and less stress and harm to your body and health. Pesticides, for example, have many harmful and unpredictable effects on us, as they can cause cancer, damage our nervous system, disturb our hormone disrupting or mutate our DNA, and they most heavily impact our healthiest foods, the fruits and vegetables. Of course it is not always easy or possible to eat organic produce, but there is a great resource that can help us out.

The Environmental Working Group, or EWG, has created the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which outlines the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen fruits and vegetables. This free resource is available to the public and updated annually.

The Dirty Dozen is made up of fruits and vegetables that have the highest amounts of pesticide residues and are of most value and importance to be organic. These usually include apples, strawberries, peaches, grapes, cherries, tomatoes, bell peppers, celery, and leafy greens.

The Clean Fifteen includes fruits and vegetables that have the lowest amounts of pesticide residues and are of less importance to be organic. These usually include avocados, pineapples, mangoes, kiwis, grapefruits, melons, eggplant, onions, cabbage and cauliflower.

You can get your free guide and full report at: www.ewg.org/foodnews

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