How to be Frugal When Buying Organic Fruits and Vegetables

apples

I have found that organic produce is usually more expensive than conventionally grown non-organic produce – hopefully, that may change in the future if more people demand more organically grown fruits and vegetables. For us, being on a budget and all, it’s hard to be frugal and purchase all our produce organic. Fortunately for us, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) comes out with a listing every year called “The Dirty Dozen” (see list at end of page). This list contains the top 12 fruits and vegetables containing the most pesticides when conventionally grown. So, the best healthy approach for us: Only buy organic fruits/vegetables if they are on “The Dirty Dozen” list AND if we eat a LOT of them REGULARLY.        

organic lettuce, celery and carrot

For example, we eat a lot of salads, and I snack on celery and carrots – so we buy ORGANIC celery,lettuce and carrots (they are #4, #9 and #11 on the EWG Dirty Dozen list). We purchase non-organic onion, broccoli and tomatoes.        

organic strawberries

fruit drink

We have a morning fruit drink that has bananas, papayas, pineapple and strawberries – so we buy ORGANIC strawberries (#6 on the EWG Dirty Dozen list), and the rest as non-organic as these fruits have less pesticides in them. We occasionally eat peaches, pears, apples, nectarines, cherries, kale, and grapes – so, because we don’t eat them regularly or eat tons of them, we buy these as non-organic produce.        

This way we are reducing
the total amount of
pesticides that we ingest, and being frugal at the same time.        

Below are the 2010 lists from the Environmental Working Group (EWG):        

“The Dirty Dozen” – the most contaminated fruits and vegetables, and “The Clean 15“ – the least contaminated fruits and vegetables.
(See EWG Foodnews for a handy printable guide that you can bring to the store with you, or an application that you can download to your cellphone.)        

peaches

Update 8/13/2010: The EWG has updated their Dirty Dozen List and their Clean 15 List for 2010!  The new lists are reflected below.  (Oh no! Blueberries are on the Dirty Dozen List – my refrigerator is full of frozen blueberries – it may take a while to eat through them!)  You may also want to see the EWG full listing of 49 fruits and vegetables.       

The 2010 “The Dirty Dozen” — the top 12 fruits and vegetables with the most pesticides when conventionally grown (From Worst to best):        

1. Peach Celery
2. Apple Peaches
3. Bell Pepper Strawberries
4. Celery Apples
5. Nectarine Blueberries
6. Strawberries Nectarines
7. Cherries Bell Pepper
8. Kale Spinach
9. Lettuce Cherries
10. Grapes (Imported) Kale/Collard Greens
11. Carrot Potatoes
12. Pear Grapes (Imported)

“The Clean 15” – the top 15 fruits and vegetables containing the least amount of pesticides when conventionally grown (from Best to worse):        

1. Onion
2. Avocado
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mango
6. Asparagus Sweet Peas
7. Sweet Peas Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Papaya Cantalope
12. Watermelon
13. Broccoli Grapefruit
14. Tomato Sweet Potato
15. Sweet Potato Honeydew Melon