Real World Wednesday

Buying Organic

As a follow-up to last week's post about Michael Pollan's newest book, I checked out To Buy or Not to Buy Organic by Cindy Burke.

In addition to talking about organic vs. local and the politics of organic agriculture, Ms. Burke includes a helpful quick list of the foods that you really should buy in their organic food and the foods that can come from the regular produce section at Safeway.

The Dirty Dozen are the twelve types of food you should exclusively purchase from organic and, hopefully, local farmers:
1) Strawberries
2) Red and Green Bell Peppers
3) Spinach
4) Cherries
5) Peaches
6) Nectarines
7) Celery
8) Apples
9) Pears
10) Grapes (especially those imported from Chile)
11) Raspberries
12) Potatoes

Really, most berries, because of their proximity to the ground and their attractiveness to bugs (and thus their generally great need for pesticide treatment) should come from the organic produce section.

The Clean Fifteen are the foods that, for one reason or another, either don't require as much pesticide treatment or don't absorb as much of the harmful chemicals.

1) Asparagus
2) Avocados
3) Bananas
4) Blueberries
5) Broccoli
6) Cabbage
7) Garlic
8) Kiwi
9) Mango
10) Onions
11) Papaya
12) Pineapple
13) Shelling Peas
14) Sweet corn
15) Watermelon (domestic)

So, now that you have a list of safe and not-so-safe foods, how should you go about obtaining these foods? We'll save that for next week.