Excerpt from "Container Gardening for Health: The 12 Most Important Fruits and Vegetables for Your Organic Garden" ISBN: 0978629329.
...In 1988, The National Research Council was commissioned by the U.S. Con-
gress to study issues concerning pesticides in the diets of infants and children using USDA/FDA data .
The results of this study are published in a 372 page book, Pesticides in the Diets
of Infants and Children(ISBN:0309048753). The study concludes that children are uniquely suscep-
tible to health problems from exposure to toxic pesticides because of their rapid
growth. Infants and children also consume greater quantities of certain foods as
a proportion of body weight. This leads to greater exposure to some pesticides.4
The problem with pesticides is that the quantity of a vegetable your child eats
may exceed government expectations. Anyone who has children knows they go
through phases where they will only eat one food or one group of foods. Since the
government is not in your dining room calculating how many pounds of straw-
berries your tot has eaten this week, they cannot tell you if she has consumed
too much of a certain pesticide. The government can tell you what foods have
chemical residue even after they have been washed and prepared for eating. In
fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Adminis-
tration conducted nearly 43,000 tests on produce samples from 2000–2004.
The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) analyzed this data and created a “simula-
tion of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets...” Their study
showed “that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by
avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the
least contaminated instead.”5 They nicknamed this list of foods “the dirty dozen.”
As of June 2007, the dirty dozen is as follows:
Rank Fruit or Veggie Score Page number
in this book
1 Peaches
2 Apples
3 Sweet Bell Peppers
4 Celery
5 Nectarines
6 Strawberries
7 Cherries
8 Lettuce
9 Grapes, Imported
10 Pears
11 Spinach
12 Potatoes
The list has changed slightly since this book was published -- Kale has moved to the top 12 and spinach has moved down slightly, but all the fruits and vegetables above still remain high on the list.
At The Gourmet Gardener, we don't believe you should have to limit these healthy fruits and vegetables in your diets. Instead, select foods your family commonly eats on the Dirty Dozen list and grow them organically. Use this book as a guide to growing healthy fruits and vegetables in containers and small spaces.
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in reference to: Container Gardening for Health (view on Google Sidewiki)
...In 1988, The National Research Council was commissioned by the U.S. Con-
gress to study issues concerning pesticides in the diets of infants and children using USDA/FDA data .
The results of this study are published in a 372 page book, Pesticides in the Diets
of Infants and Children(ISBN:0309048753). The study concludes that children are uniquely suscep-
tible to health problems from exposure to toxic pesticides because of their rapid
growth. Infants and children also consume greater quantities of certain foods as
a proportion of body weight. This leads to greater exposure to some pesticides.4
The problem with pesticides is that the quantity of a vegetable your child eats
may exceed government expectations. Anyone who has children knows they go
through phases where they will only eat one food or one group of foods. Since the
government is not in your dining room calculating how many pounds of straw-
berries your tot has eaten this week, they cannot tell you if she has consumed
too much of a certain pesticide. The government can tell you what foods have
chemical residue even after they have been washed and prepared for eating. In
fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Adminis-
tration conducted nearly 43,000 tests on produce samples from 2000–2004.
The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) analyzed this data and created a “simula-
tion of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets...” Their study
showed “that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by
avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the
least contaminated instead.”5 They nicknamed this list of foods “the dirty dozen.”
As of June 2007, the dirty dozen is as follows:
Rank Fruit or Veggie Score Page number
in this book
1 Peaches
2 Apples
3 Sweet Bell Peppers
4 Celery
5 Nectarines
6 Strawberries
7 Cherries
8 Lettuce
9 Grapes, Imported
10 Pears
11 Spinach
12 Potatoes
The list has changed slightly since this book was published -- Kale has moved to the top 12 and spinach has moved down slightly, but all the fruits and vegetables above still remain high on the list.
At The Gourmet Gardener, we don't believe you should have to limit these healthy fruits and vegetables in your diets. Instead, select foods your family commonly eats on the Dirty Dozen list and grow them organically. Use this book as a guide to growing healthy fruits and vegetables in containers and small spaces.
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in reference to: Container Gardening for Health (view on Google Sidewiki)
