Unfortunately they don't put the 'clean 15' list of products where there is little difference between organic and commercial in a readable format, it's a slide show:
Save Money On Organic Fruits And Vegetables - Low Pesticide Foods - thedailygreen.com
Also, I question the usefulness of their list. They rate celery the 'worst', because they could
detect 64 different chemicals. The list seems to be based on number of chemicals detected, rather than the amounts weighted by the toxicity of those chemicals. Is .037 parts per BILLION of something a concern? Maybe, but they don't seem to address that at all.
And how did they choose what to look for? As I recall, the guy who came up with these tests was finding all sorts of things we used on crops were carcinogenic. But then he started looking at the crops themselves, and he found that the naturally occurring chemicals in the crops were carcinogenic! Thousands (millions?) of times more than what was added by the commercial growers. These are sometimes the plants own defense against insects, molds, etc.
I just wish lists like this informed us rather than just made some kind of headline. I don't see much in the way of actionable information there.
Unfortunately, there can be a downside to organic also. So this isn't always a harmless decision. For example, to raise some crops w/o weed killers, the farmers till the field, water it so the weeds sprout (using water and diesel to pump the water and creating more soil erosion), then they till it again to rip out the weeds (using diesel fuel for the tractor, and causing more soil erosion), and then they plant the crop. Oh, and then they need to plant additional acreage to make up for the time they waited for the weeds to sprout - more water and diesel and erosion). I'm not sure that is a 'green' alternative or not?
-ERD50
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