What items should I buy organic?!


Question: What items should I buy organic?
Isn't a good rule of thumb: fruits & veggies with thick, inedible skins like bananas, avocados, etc usually are ok to buy non organic but items like apples, grapes, celery etc should be bought organic?
Or how do you know what should be bought organic and what foods it doesn't matter much?

Also, what about eggs & milk?
Thanks :)

Answers:

You are right. Look up the dirty dozen for a list of everything then yu can print it out and hang it on your fridge.

Where I like mil is already SUPER expensive (almost 5 bucks a gallon) so there is NO way I would buy organic.



it really depends on what your budget can support. For fruit and vegetables, thin skins= buy organic. Any vegetable or fruit whose skin you eat or has a thin enough skin for pesticides to soak through, you should get organic if you can. Lettuce and cabbage would be important to buy organic, as they are mostly comprised of leaves exposed directly to the environment.
For eggs and milk, I wouldn't simply look for organic, I would look for farm-raised, no hormones added, sometimes free range.



get 2% milk or nonfat, get organic eggs, and all ur meats should definitely be organic. did you know that chickens dont have 2 waste holes? they only have one, the cloaca. so when they go to the bathroom, both pee and poop come out at the same time. so make sure you know where your eggs are coming from :)



Usually on foods like fruits & veggies say that its organic. On Eggs too. Milk you might want to try soy milk. The organic foods are much healthier but if you wanted to make something healthier then yes i would go with the organic



.Health.com: 10 types of food that can make you sick

Strawberries
Strawberries may be a super food—but they pose a potential risk unless you go organic. In addition to having up to 13 pesticides detected on the fruit, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis, conventional "strawberries have a large surface area and all those tiny bumps, which makes the pesticides hard to wash off, so you’re ingesting more of those chemicals," explains Marion Nestle, PhD, a professor of nutrition and public health at New York University and author of What to Eat.

If you can, also skip conventional peaches, apples, blueberries, and cherries, which are typically treated with multiple pesticides and usually eaten skins-on.

Popcorn
The linings of microwave-popcorn bags may contain a toxic chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, which is used to prevent the food from sticking to the paper. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PFOA is a likely carcinogen. "We don’t know all of the hazardous effects of PFOA yet, but we have some evidence of a link to cancer, as well as to effects on the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems," says David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany.

Pick up an air-popper or make your popcorn in a pan on the stove top.



Milk
The milk you’re drinking may not be doing your body good: Dairy products account for a reported 60 to 70 percent of the estrogens we consume through our food. If that seems like a shockingly large number, it’s mainly because milk naturally contains hormones passed along from cows. What worries some experts is that about 17% of dairy cows are treated with the hormone rBST (or rBGH), which stimulates milk production by increasing circulating levels of another hormone called insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1).

"Elevated levels of IGF-1 in people are associated with an increased risk of cancer, including breast cancer," Dr. Schettler explains. In fact, the use of rBGH is banned in Europe and Canada. Although research has yet to definitively conclude whether drinking rBGH-treated milk increases your IGF-1 levels high enough to cause concern, Dr. Schettler says it’s advisable to buy milk that hasn’t been treated with it. So pick up milk that’s labeled rBGH-free, rBST-free, or is produced without artificial hormones.

Health.com: 11 healthy milk shakes and smoothies

Celery
When researchers at the EWG analyzed 89,000 produce-pesticide tests to determine the most contaminated fruits and vegetables, celery topped the chart. "In terms of the sheer number of chemicals, it was the worst," says Sonya Lunder, senior analyst at the EWG. Celery stalks are very porous, so they retain the pesticides they’re sprayed with—up to 13 of them, according to the EWG analysis. Lunder also advises buying organic bell peppers, spinach and potatoes because they scored high for pesticides, as well.

Tomato sauce
When picking up tomato sauce or paste, choose the glass jar or box over the can. "The lining on the inside of food cans that’s used to protect against corrosion and bacteria may contain BPA," explains Cheryl Lyn Walker, PhD, a professor of carcinogenesis at MD Anderson Cancer Center and past president of the Society of Toxicology.

In 2009, Consumer Reports tested BPA levels in a variety of canned foods and found it in nearly all of the brands tested, suggesting that the chemical leaked in. "What can happen is that BPA in the lining can leach into the food," Walker explains.

Organic foods article




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