If you were given the choice of buying organic apples at $1.58/kg, or apples sprayed with arsenic for $1.28/kg, which would you choose? Would you buy the cheaper apples to save the 30 cents? Or would you pay a little bit more so your family wouldn’t be exposed to the arsenic? Probably the latter.
Pesticides are poison. They are meant to kill the insects and fungi that attack crops. But they are not organism specific. No, your child is not going to die from eating a non-organically grown apple. But do you really want your child(ren) to be exposed over and over again to the small amounts of poison present on their fruits and vegetables? Do YOU want to be exposed to it?
And for the small percentage of you who figure that you could save the 30 cents, and just wash the apples really well… well guess what, the pesticides don’t just sit on the surface. Fruits and vegetables (especially thin skinned ones like apples, berries, grapes, and carrots) absorb them through their skin, and you cannot wash it all off. That means, that for all of your scrubbing and even boiling, the pesticides are still there and you still eat them.
My family is very lucky, because we have some excellent farmer’s markets in our area, and we can get organic produce, year-round, for the same price as regular supermarket produce. It’s lovely to know that if my 4 year old takes an apple from our fruit bowl and eats it without washing it, he hasn’t ingested anything harmful.
I know i will return to this topic in the future because i think it’s a very important one. I think that we all deserve to eat food that is healthy for us. And i think it’s imperative that people be more aware of what it is that they are consuming.
I will leave you with this U.S. Government fact sheet regarding pesticides exposure in children.
