Whether you do it for the health of your body or the health of the planet, eating organic foods is a really wonderful choice. But not everybody who enjoys eating organically has access to (or the funds for) all the organic food they want. Instead, you have to pick and choose between organic foods at the grocery store, only buying a bit here or there.
If you are unable to go fully organic with your diet, you can still make a difference for yourself and the planet by purchasing some foods in particular in their organic form. These are foods that, when grown using conventional methods, are often produced with pesticides that are particularly harmful.
Do you talk about your love for all things organic on your internet dating profile, but just can't swing a fully organic diet? Read on for a list of the 5 fruits, veggies, grains, and other foods that you should always try to pick up in the organic aisle of your grocery store.
Peaches and nectarines
In the past, the peach industry has been slapped on the wrist for using pesticides illegally and improperly. And while most peaches and nectarines produced today don't necessarily break the law, they do come covered in pesticides-- sometimes more than one at a time. When recently tested, around 90% of conventionally-produced peaches and nectarines were found to have more than one type of unhealthy pesticide on them. And even when you wash first, almost all those pesticides get right into your body-- and right into the soil the fruits are grown in.
Strawberries
There are a lot of good reasons to buy strawberries in the organic food aisle of your grocery store. For one, the organic strawberries taste vastly better. Conventionally-grown strawberries are generally harvested before they're ripe, and artificially gassed in order to give them their red, ripe-looking color. But when you bite into one, it's another story altogether: hard, bland, and sour strawberries. Not exactly what you had in mind, probably, for that perfect strawberry shortcake. Organic strawberries, on the other hand, are sweet, juicy, and full of the natural strawberry flavor that you think of when you think of this wonderful summer fruit.
Organic strawberries are also far healthier, too. Strawberries are one of the fruits most heavily laden with pesticides... and because they are particularly absorbent (all those little indentations act like pores) and delicate, washing enough of the pesticides off to make them less toxic is really difficult.
Brown and white rice
Chances are, rice is found in a lot of the food you eat. But conventionally-grown rice is simply smothered in pesticides-- almost half of which have been proven to have harmful effects on your body and to seep into the ground, harming water systems. Rice production in some areas has even been known to cause semi-permanent contamination of the local water supply. A simple grain, sure... but when produced with pesticides, it's harmful for everybody around it.
Milk and other dairy
A lot more goes on to get milk from the cow to you than you probably think. In nature, cows eat almost exclusively grass-- it's what their stomachs were designed to digest. But to save money, most conventional dairies feed their cows a diet of corn and other foods (which are generally covered in pesticides). But because their bodies aren't designed to eat all that corn (and the like), dairy farmers pump them full of antibiotics (and, often, hormones as well) to keep them from getting sick because they're eating the wrong thing. Buying organic dairy means you're buying healthy milk from healthy cows-- because conventional dairy cows are anything but.
Bananas
When they grow naturally, bananas are often covered in pests, including spiders and all kinds of nasty-looking things. But those pests are a perfectly natural part of raising bananas! Partly because of where they're commonly grown, conventional bananas are often far worse than fruits and vegetables grown domestically. They're simply covered in pesticides, and some of those pesticides are particularly harmful to your health. In fact, people who have worked on conventional banana farms have even come down with severe health problems due to their unprotected exposure to the pesticides commonly used on this fruit.
