Pesticides & the 2021 Dirty Dozen List

When it comes to pesticides, are you worried about what’s used on your greens? It’s a personal choice, but many people take care in selecting foods for their family that are grown using fewer pesticides and herbicides. We get asked frequently whether our Twisted River Farm greens are grown organically, and while we are not technically certified organic (that requires a lot of paperwork and documentation that we haven’t yet tackled), we grow our greens without herbicides and pesticides and as organically as possible.

We don’t have to use pesticides at Twisted River Farm for a couple reasons: mainly climate and geography. We don’t have the same pest problems other areas do, and we also rotate our crops quickly and harvest them at a young age. That means that pests don’t have as much time to do damage. As for herbicides, we don’t use them because we use a method called stale seed-bedding. This entails encouraging weed germination before we plant, followed by flame-weeding to kill the first flush of weeds. When our greens grow in that previously flamed area, they grow so quickly they outperform the second rush of weeds.

Why worry about pesticides? Research is still evolving, but in the simplest terms, pesticides are chemicals that can have unsavory health effects with long term exposure to them. As Michael Crupin, M.D., M.P.H., the director of Consumer Reports’ Food Safety & Sustainability Center remarks, “It’s not realistic to expect we wouldn’t have any pesticides in our bodies in this day and age, but that would be the ideal. We just don’t know enough about the health effects.”

If you want to diminish the amount of pesticides and herbicides you ingest, consider buying organic when choosing something off the 2021 Dirty Dozen list (we’ve got you covered for 2 and 12!) This year’s 12 dirtiest fruits and veggies are:

1. Strawberries

2. Spinach

3. Kale, collard, and mustard greens

4. Nectarines

5. Apples

6. Grapes

7. Cherries

8. Peaches

9. Pears

10. Bell and hot peppers

11. Celery

12. Tomatoes

Alternatively, the Clean 15 list outlines produce grown with the least amount of pesticides or health threats:

1. Avocados

2. Sweet Corn

3. Pineapple

4. Onions

5. Papaya

6. Sweet peas (frozen)

7. Eggplant

8. Asparagus

9. Broccoli

10. Cabbage

11. Kiwi

12. Cauliflower

13. Mushrooms

14. Honeydew Melon

15. Cantaloupe