Foods You Should and Shouldn’t Buy Organic

What foods do you buy organic and what not every month? Usually, organic foods are expensive and that is why getting a healthy diet is a bit difficult. But do you know that there are foods that should be bought organic while there are few which shouldn’t be bought organic at all? Let us check what they are today.

What could be the reason behind the high cost of Organic food items?

1. Organic foods production is possible only with high labor costs than regular food.

2. The farmland for organic crops is just 1% of the entire farmland.

3. Getting the organic certification isn’t easy at all. This is also expensive.

4. Organic farms have crop rotations due to which the volume of the crop produced is comparatively low.

5. The cost of the crops is reduced by Government subsidies.

Don’t worry about all these reasons. If you have decided to eat everything healthy, you need not buy everything organic. You just need to make your grocery list wisely. Do you know that there are different levels of organic foods?

1. 95 – 100% organic foods are those with that percentage of organic ingredients.

2. 79 – 95% of organic foods have up to 30% non-organic ingredients.

3. Less than 70% of organic foods contain more than 30% non-organic ingredients.

Foods To Buy Organic:

Now let us check which foods you should buy organic. These are 12 and are known as Dirty Dozen. Foods are tested to label so based on 6 measures.

1. Based on the sample percentage with detectable pesticides in them.

2. Based on the sample percentage with more than 2 detectable pesticides.

3. Based on the average number of pesticides per sample.

4. Based on the maximum number of pesticides per sample.

5. Based on the total number of pesticides on the commodity.

The Dirty Dozen:

These are the dirty dozen foods that you should consider buying organic at any cost especially in a particular season to increase its nutrition value and reduce the cost.

1. Apples – round the year

2. Strawberries – spring season

3. Grapes – summer season

4. Celery – round the year

5. Peaches – summer season

6. Spinach – spring season

7. Sweet bell peppers – round the year

8. Imported nectarines – summer season

9. Cucumber – summer season

10. Cherry tomatoes – summer season

11. Imported snap peas – summer season

12. Potatoes – fall

Foods Not To Buy Organic:

There are 15 foods listed which you can buy non-organic as well and these are also decided based on the above 6 principles. These 15 are known as Clean Fifteen.

The Clean Fifteen:

1. Avocados (cleanest)

2. Sweetcorn

3. Pineapples

4. Cabbage

5. Frozen sweet peas

6. Onions

7. Asparagus

8. Mangoes

9. Papayas

10. Kiwis

11. Eggplant

12. Grapefruit

13. Cantaloupe

14. Cauliflower

15. Sweet potatoes

Few Interesting Things:

Two-thirds of all the samples collected for tests contain pesticide residues such as bugs and weed killers. Among all of them, avocados are found to be the cleanest of all. All the imported nectarine samples were found to be clean and out of all the apple samples, about 99% were found to be clean with no pesticides.

So, next time you go shopping, get groceries wisely saving some bucks since you know which foods you should and shouldn’t buy organic.