How I first even heard about the Dirty Dozen ™ and Clean 15™ guide for organic produce: I write reviews over at Amazon and have been for years. When you’re an avid reader like I am, it simply starts. In my family we joke about “the gift of my opinion.” So, as a natural course of things, as I bought books and read them, I started to review them. In general, as things started to get neggie online about 10 years ago, I made a point to write book reviews which were generally positive, 3-5 start reviews only.
Well then, Amazon branched out into way more products, and when I had bad experiences with products, I had to make sure to warn people off of purchasing slipshod products when that was the case. With that, in the hopes of my giving their books an honest review, book publishers approached me to receive copies of their books. I have received a lot of cookbooks. It’s a recent popular item to include towards the end of the book, the Dirty Dozen ™ and Clean 15™ of organic produce.
The Dirty Dozen ™ and Clean 15™ is meant to serve as a guide for choosing which produce items are the most important to consider purchased organic and those less so.
It was when I read the FMD Fast Metabolism Diet book a few years ago that I first read a really good discussion about some produce and legumes which we just naturally assume are all terrific, nutritious, wholesome, and naturally good for us. But that is not the case.
Take for example, Soy Beans. As legumes, they are not even included in the Dirty Dozen ™ and Clean 15™ It was back in the 1970s that the Natural Food Movement educated us all about Soybeans and how nutritious they were for us and good for feeding the soil.
And then the GMO industry ruined them. They are so over cultivated that apparently the majority of the yield now is hard to digest and problematic to eat. Soybeans are one of those foods where purchasing organic is worth it.
Then there’s the produce available so cheaply at the 99cents and Dollor Shop stores. Just because a produce item is cheap at the store doesn’t mean it’s the best choice to purchase and eat. The the Dirty Dozen ™ and Clean 15™ should serve as a helpful guide for you and your family for your produce purchases, weekly meal menu, and recipes.
While it might be great to purchase organic produce for everything every time, for a variety of reasons, including availability, it’s just simply not always possible.
Here’s The List. Take a screen shot and keep it in your phone’s photo albums to reference for planning your weekly food shopping and meal plans.
We say “weekly food shopping,” but in actuality because of the food enzymes life being so short lived in fresh produce, it’s really best to restock produce at least 2-3x a week. Yes, daily would be ideal, but I’ll leave that to the Fine Dining restaurants who have the time to devote to that each day. For me, twice is a week is a minimum. Three times a week is our next level.
Personally, I do often purchase cucumbers and zucchini non-organic. The stores which stock them are just so close by to where we live and they are both food staples for us. So, I just make a point to wash them vigorously and give them a bit of a scrub with the produce-only pink-handled brush by the kitchen sink. Some suggest you peel them. To me, the whole point of eating them is the chlorophyll in the green skin.
The EWG – Environmental Working Group offers a ton of super helpful guides to food and knowing what’s going on with our produce food supply. They are worth checking out and learning from, whatever you decide to buy to eat. Best to be well-informed, isn’t it? www.ewg.org
Produce’s 12 Most Contaminated Fruits and Vegetables: 2019’s The Dirty Dozen™
- Strawberries
- Spinach
- Kale
- Nectarines
- Apples (repeatedly on the list)
- Grapes
- Peaches
- Cherries
- Pears
- Tomatoes
- Celery
- Potatoes
+Bonus Baddy: Hot Peppers
Now, much of the problem with those being pesticide laden 1. Wash Thoroughly and 2. Peel, like with the Hot Peppers. I consume them in such minuscule quantities, they are almost a non-issue. Where I reside in SoCal, we are blessed with loads of local farming and produce stands. There really are local farmers markets in almost every city in of Orange County. So, I can circumvent the pesticide lavished strawberries locally. Or as I like to put it: #LOCal Local. OC. Cal. Get it? Got it? Good. lol.
There’s actually an even longer list, but that will be for another post and a more in depth discussion. This is just meant to assist your regular produce shopping.
I like to think of The Clean 15™ as the Dream Team of Fruits and Veggies. Feel free to think of them that way as well!
Produce’s Dream Team of Fruits and Vegetables – The 15 Least Contaminated: The Clean 15™
- Avocados
- Sweet Corn
- Pineapples
- Sweet Peas (frozen)
- Onions
- Papayas
- Eggplant
- Asparagus
- Kiwis
- Cabbages
- Cauliflower
- Cantaloupes
- Broccoli
- Mushrooms
- Honeydew Melons
