It sounds like the title of a Western movie, but the Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen actually refers to a list by the Environmental Working Group, of the fruits and vegetables that are grown with the most and least pesticides. This can be a helpful tool for knowing whether to buy organic or non-organic produce.
The list changes every year based on the available data from the USDA, but here is the current list for 2022.
2022’s Dirty Dozen
To work out the Dirty Dozen, the EWG used USDA data on 44,702 samples of 46 of the most popular fruits and vegetables. These were washed and peeled before being tested them for pesticides.
After washing, the report found that more than 70% of non-organic fresh produce sold in the US contained residues of pesticides.
There are a number of different factors which are used to rank the produce from ‘clean’ to ‘dirty’, including the number of pesticides and amount of pesticides.
The list for 2022 is as follows:
- Strawberries
- Spinach
- Kale, collard, and mustard greens
- Nectarines
- Apples
- Grapes
- Bell and hot peppers
- Cherries
- Peaches
- Pears
- Celery
- Tomatoes
2022’s Clean Fifteen
And the Clean Fifteen as as follows:
- Avocados
- Sweet corn
- Pineapple
- Onions
- Papaya
- Sweet peas (frozen)
- Asparagus
- Honeydew melon
- Kiwi
- Cabbage
- Mushrooms
- Cantaloupes
- Mangoes
- Watermelon
- Sweet Potatoes
So what does this mean for me?
This doesn’t necessarily mean you should gorge on the ‘clean’ veggies and avoid the ‘dirty’ ones like the plague. It is however a helpful indicator of the amount of chemicals in certain produce. Non-organic farming use pesticides and insecticides on their produce – chemicals which can damage our nervous system, endocrine system, reproductive system, immune system, and more.
It might be that you therefore choose to buy organic where possible for those items on the Dirty Dozen list.
Interested in learning more about organic? Check out our blog to Go Organic for Organic September.
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