Lifestyles 2000- Circulated in Fremont, Ohio; Sandusky, Ottawa & Erie Counties

Naturally Savvy.com
Organic or non-organic is the question. If you've ever stood in the grocery store asking yourself if organic foods are really worth the increased price tag, you're not alone. And if you've ever shrugged and thought, "How bad can non-organic really be?" while putting an organic peach or plum back on the shelf, you may have made a big mistake.
According to a review (http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Pesticide_SSR_2008.pdf) conducted by The Organic Center (http://www.organic-center.org/), an organization that gathers peer-reviewed scientific information to communicate the benefits of organic farming, Americans ingest 10 to 13 pesticides daily from food, beverages and drinking water. While the risk is usually low, higher levels are not unheard of, and they can pose serious risks for pregnancy (http://www.naturallysavvy.com/family-life/natural-pregnancy-and-prenatal/natural-prenatal/971-prenatal-nutrition-basics), young children and other vulnerable persons.
Charles Benbrook, head scientist for The Organic Center, says reducing pesticide exposure will certainly lead to healthier infants. "There will be more full-term births and fewer underweight babies. The rate of several birth defects should go down, in some cases perhaps by one-quarter or more."
Benbook says the greatest impact of converting to organic practices occurs on fruit and vegetable farms where more pesticides are applied than on wheat farms, so consumers should focus their organic purchases in the produce section.
Using data from the USDA's Pesticide Data Program, The Organic Center study generated lists of the fruits and vegetables (http://www.naturallysavvy.com/natural-nutrition-101/general-nutrition/veggies/1036-color-your-world) with the highest pesticide residue (http://www.naturallysavvy.com/naturally-green/eco-living/miscellaneous-green/2189-ewg-dishes-out-their-updated-dirty-dozen-list). The lists can help consumers choose the organic items they want to purchase-but they don't stay the same throughout the year.
"There are clear, and in some cases, dramatic upward spikes in pesticide residue levels and risks during the winter months when imports account for a large share of perishable fruits and vegetables in the market place," Benbrook said.
While cranberries, nectarines and peaches top the domestic list for pesticide residue, grapes top the imports list (followed, again, by nectarines and peaches). The lists also include a dietary risk rating, and the imports carry a far higher risk. Imported nectarines carry nearly three times the dietary risk, while imported sweet bell peppers surpass five times the risk of domestic peppers, already quite high in pesticide residue.
The least contaminated conventionally farmed foods include citrus fruits, bananas, pineapples, onions, meats and grains, as well as processed foods such as raisins and tomato paste.
For those pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables, organics are undoubtedly a much safer way to go, but they won't completely eliminate traces of pesticides in your diet. Contamination is a serious issue for organic farmers, Benbrook said. "Many conventional pesticides can move across field boundaries by drift or through use of contaminated irrigation water."
Root vegetable crops are also contaminated by chemicals that persist in the soil long after a farmer has converted to organic production, and cross-contamination can also take place after the foods have been harvested, "in a cold storage facility, during trucking, or at the retail store level," Benbrook said.
While the benefits to humans are increasingly becoming clear, organic farming has an equally positive effect on the environment. "Without a doubt, the most positive benefit of organic farming is improvement in the quality of soil," Benbrook says, adding drinking water would be cleaner because "there is no runoff of these chemicals."
Instead of using toxic chemicals to control pests, organic farmers look for a natural solution, such as introducing a pest that will eat the pests that like to dine on crops. "The way they avoid problems is they promote biodiversity," Benbrook says. "There's some bug that's going to eat another bug."
Eating organic foods won't remove the pesticide problem entirely, but if U.S. food crop farmers-representing just 3 percent of all farming land in the United States-switched to organic practices and people ate more organics, The Organics Center estimates 97 percent of the risk would vanish.
While other sectors have faltered in the recession, organic food sales (http://www.naturallysavvy.com/naturally-green/eco-living/miscellaneous-green/2360-organic-sales-up-despite-recession) continued to climb in the United States in 2008, according to the Organic Trade Association (http://www.ota.com/). Though organic sales still only represent 3.74 percent of total food sales for the year, a recent survey conducted jointly by the OTA and KIWI Magazine (http://www.kiwimagonline.com/) found 31 percent of Americans have increased organic foods purchases in the past year, cutting out other items in favor of organic eats.
The bottom line: Choose organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible but when you have to compromise, do so with items that generally have lower levels of pesticide residue.
(Andrea Donsky and Randy Boyer are the co-founders of NaturallySavvy.com, a website that educates people on the benefits of living a natural, organic and green lifestyle. For more information and to sign up for their newsletter, visit www.NaturallySavvy.com) (http://www.NaturallySavvy.com).
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