Let's Think About What We Know About Produce

Last Spring, I was fortunate to go on a cruise around the Caribbean. During one of our days at sea, the spa & fitness center had a seminar on toxins and I decided to attend. My eyes were opened wide during the one hour lecture and I've given the information presented a lot of thought ever since then. For the most part, they didn't share anything that I didn't already know, but they put it all together in a way I'd never really considered. So let's talk about what we know. This article is the first in a series and will just cover produce.

What do we know about some of the produce we eat? Produce is sprayed with pesticides or herbicides to keep pests from destroying it before it can be harvested or to keep weeds from growing. The suffix -cide is from the latin verb 'caedere' meaning to strike down or to kill. We know that these are designed to kill the "pests/weeds" but what are the pests or weeds? Living organisms. What do we know about the human body? The human body is a living organism. Our produce is treated with substances designed to kill living organisms which includes our own bodies.

You may be thinking, 'but I wash all my produce first so the chemicals get washed away.' The truth is, washing our produce doesn't do much. First, pesticides can seep down in to the fruit or vegetable through the skin making it impossible to just wash off. Second, most of the time, the pesticides are protected. Let's think about this using apples as an example. Have you ever picked an apple straight from the tree? This is what it would look like:

Does it look different from a store-bought apple?

The apples on the tree are a little more dull, not quite as shiny as the store-bought apples. That is because apples in the store have a waxy coating added to them to make them look more desirable (to encourage you to buy them). But what does that wax coating really do? What does it do to a car? When you wax your car, it makes water droplets just roll right off it. It's no different with the apple. When you wash the apple, it just cleans off that waxy layer, which unfortunately, is protecting all the pesticides that were applied first underneath. And, just so you know, it's probably not just a couple times that it's been sprayed. The research I've done varies, but it's mostly consistent to the fact that produce can be sprayed up to 30 times with different pesticides which first seep into the produce and then may be locked in under the wax. That's a lot of pesticides that we're ingesting, which are then stored in the colon where they slowly poison the body (the living organism where they ultimately end up).

Waxy appearances aren't the only trick used to encourage you to buy. Have you ever bit into what appeared to be a red, juicy strawberry only to have it taste awful? Chances are, the strawberry you just ate wasn't ripe when it was picked and the red coloring was added to it to make it look appealing. This trick is used a lot for produce that isn't in season. Aside from the dangers of artificial coloring, which can constitute an entire article unto itself, eating unripened produce is not exactly healthy. If it hasn't had time to complete its growing cycle before being harvested, then it hasn't had time to reach its full nutritional value.

The absolute best option is to grow your own produce, where you know and control exactly what goes on it. I have two large dogs and an extremely black thumb (I even killed a cactus once - that takes a special kind of black thumb!) so I'm still working on this in my own life. For now, Farmers Markets and Greenling are my best alternatives. Organic produce is a third option, but most organic produce is treated with organic pesticides. Common sense should tell us that even a natural pesticide is still designed to kill living organisms, which is a category that still effects our own bodies. If Organic is your best option, the EWG has their Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 which rank various produce on their levels of pesticides so you know which are the most important to buy Organic.

Up next: Processed Foods