Have you heard of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ and the ‘Clean Fifteen’? For those of you who are like us here in the Spanish mountains, and have minimal options for purchasing organic fruit and veg on a daily basis, these 2 charts are a helpful resource to manage your toxic load more effectively. 

We’re doing a few posts on Red Berries this month as they are all coming into season and have SO many health benefits. 

However, cherries and strawberries make the Dirty Dozen list every year, and red berries in general have a high level of pesticide residue. 

Conventional blueberries for example, have more than 50 pesticide residues, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so it’s always better to buy organic red berries when you can.

We have limited resources for organic fruits here and have to travel to get them and then they tend to only last a day or two. 

There are tons of products and claims about how to remove the pesticide residues from your fruit and veg, but our advice is to always refer to non-sponsored science for the truth! 

Expensive ‘veggie washes’ have been tested and found to have little added effect over tap water despite bragging they are three, four, five, ten times better than water, so don’t waste your money on them! 

Vinegar is also a popular option to help remove residues, but under testing, diluted vinegar (i.e. in water), was only marginally more effective than water and you actually need full strength, undiluted vinegar to remove all residues. 

But washing all your fruit and veg in undiluted vinegar is going to get pretty expensive, pretty quickly! 

But don’t worry, there is something that works better than all of the above and its MUCH CHEAPER! Good old plain table salt! Studies have found that a 10% salt solution appears to work as good or better than full-strength vinegar!

For more information on the DIRTY DOZEN and CLEAN FIFTEEN – visit the Environmental Working Group Website. 

For a purely science-based look at the best way to wash your fruit and veggies – visit NutritionFacts.org. 

As a general rule of thumb on this, fruits and veggies grown on top of the ground will have more pesticide residue than those grown underground.

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