How to Remove Pesticides From Your Fruits and Vegetables

EWG's 2018 list of the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen are out today! Have you checked them out yet? While we're not sticklers for organic food (it is pricier, and the facts on their benefits are a little muddy), we still think the dirty and clean lists are a handy resource to make better shopping and eating decisions.

So what happens if your favourite food falls on the dirty dozen list and you don't want to always buy organic? Well, you could spend more time washing your produce to ensure the least amount of pesticides stay on them. It might not remove all of the pesticides (especially since pesticides can seep into the skin and flesh of produce), but it will at least ensure that you're getting as much poison off the surface of your food as possible! 

So what's a cheap and effective way to remove pesticides from your fruits and veggies? According to the  Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, soaking your produce in a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and water for a few minutes can help to remove much more toxins from your food than just washing or soaking them in water alone.

In their experiments, Gala apples were soaked in a baking soda solution to test the effectiveness of pesticide removal. At the 8-minute mark, pesticide residue on the surface of the apples were reduced significantly. After 15 minutes of soaking - there were virtually no pesticides left on the surface. This is because sodium bicarbonate can specifically degrade the two pesticides used in the study - thiabendazole and phosmet. It might not work for other pesticide chemicals, but adding a few spoonfuls of baking soda to your vegetable soak can do no harm! :) 

Featured image by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash

This post was originally published on Chez Moi De Beaute's Wellness Blog.

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By LI HUIJIA