Wash Your Fruit .. Veg
Scientists have found baking soda to be a surprisingly simple and affordable solution for getting rid of as much as 96 percent of the toxic pesticides that contaminate most fruits and vegetables
Surface pesticide residues were most effectively removed by sodium bicarbonate (baking soda, NaHCO3) solution when compared to either tap water or Clorox bleach.
Baking Soda Works Better Than Bleach to Remove Pesticides From Produce
Washing fruits, vegetables and herbs to remove residue is the food industry’s standard procedure, but questions have arisen regarding its effectiveness.
Does rinsing your carrots, plums or cauliflower do the job before eating it?
How about holding it under the faucet and rubbing it with a bit of dish soap?
A new study offered a surprisingly simple and affordable tip on how to get rid of toxic pesticides that contaminate food, and it’s not what is currently being used.
The research team approached the problem with a study on which method would be better for reducing toxins on produce. Lili He and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts used apples to examine the effectiveness of commercial and homemade washing agents to remove both surface and internalized residues.
Science Daily reports:
“The researchers applied two common pesticides — the fungicide thiabendazole, which past research has shown can penetrate apple peels, and the insecticide phosmet — to organic Gala apples. They then washed these apples with three different liquids: tap water, a 1 percent baking soda/water solution, and a U.S.-EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)-approved commercial bleach solution often used on produce.”
Using highly specialized analysis, the scientists found that surface pesticide residues on apples that had been treated 24 hours prior were removed most effectively using baking soda.
The team tried tap water and even Clorox bleach, and neither worked as well as the baking soda, which is highly alkaline, probably because the pesticides degrade faster in baking soda, which makes them easier to physically remove by washing.
Science Daily October 25, 2017
J. Agric. Food Chem. October 25, 2017
Interestingly, another Reuters article posted just three days later reported findings from another study at a Boston clinic on the eating habits of 325 women and their newborns. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that:
Eating more fruits and vegetables with high levels of pesticide residue was associated with an increased risk of miscarriages early in pregnancy.
Women who ate the highest amounts of fruits and vegetables with high levels of pesticide residue (more than two servings a day) were 18 percent less likely to have a baby compared with women who ate the lowest amounts of these foods — less than one serving a day.
Pollutants, like pesticides, could be contributing to ‘unexplained’ fertility problems.
Jorge Chavarro, senior study author from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, stated it was already known that:
“Women occupationally exposed to pesticides and women exposed to pesticides used in agriculture by virtue of living in or near agricultural production areas experience greater risk of infertility, pregnancy loss and other adverse reproductive outcomes.
Our study is the first to show that exposure to low doses of pesticide residues, such as those achieved by consuming conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, may also have adverse health effects. This was actually very surprising to me.”
Reuters Pesticide Residue on Fruits and Veggies Tied to Infertility October 31, 2017
JAMA Internal Medicine October 30, 2017
National Geographic July 18, 2013
The Special Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, endorsed by the Worlwide Integrated Assessment (WIA), https://www.tfsp.info/about-us/ . has denounced the use of systemic pesticides, as they are "potent and persistent neurotoxins whose use is increasing and affecting species and environments."
Unlike other pesticides that remain on the surface of treated foliage, systemic pesticides are absorbed by the plant and transported to all tissues (leaves, flowers, roots and stems, as well as pollen and nectar).
The most common are neonicotinoids and fipronil, a type of neuroactive systemic insecticides. Products containing neonicotinoids can be applied to the root (on treated seeds or soaking the soil) or sprayed on the crop. The insecticide toxin remains in the crop throughout the season.
Systemic pesticides such as Imidacloprid, Neonicotinoid, Clotianidin and Fiprontil interrupt neuronal transmission in the central nervous system of invertebrate organisms and thus cause direct death.
The fruits and vegetables treated are toxic to people and insects. Some of its metabolites have been found in milk, meat, chicken and eggs. The Global Integral Assessment was presented as a special publication of the scientific journal of Springer Environmental Science and Pollution Research in January 2015, and consists of eight articles. The WIA is also available as a unique report containing the 8 scientific articles.
www.tfsp.info/.../WIA_2015.pdf
Different scientific reports confirm the risk of these substances that act in very low doses and can alter the hormonal balance and the regulation of embryonic development, causing adverse effects on health, including cancer (breast, ovaries, testes, etc.), damage to the reproductive system, liver, obesity, diabetes, neurological damage and other serious chronic diseases.
Systemic pesticides can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. The liver is the main target organ, with high levels of serum enzymes and alteration of parameters such as triglycerides, cholesterol and blood coagulation time.
Jean-Marc Bonmatin of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, one of the authors of WIA says: "Honeybees are being put at serious risk" but also "other pollinators such as butterflies and a wide range of other invertebrates like earthworms and vertebrates like birds.
" Adding "we are witnessing a threat to the productivity of our natural and agricultural environment equivalent to that represented by organophosphates or DDT," he says. "Far from protecting food production, the use of neonicotinoid pesticides is threatening the infrastructure that makes it possible, endangering pollinators, the basic plot of habitats and organisms that keep pests at bay in a natural way at the heart of the functioning of an ecosystem.".
Few people know about the devastating systemic qualities of many pesticides - no amount of washing will remove them because they are INSIDE the fruit or vegetable. The other side of this dirty coin is that any fruit or vegetable grown in soil sprayed with these chemicals will be nutritionally inferior to versions of the same crop grown without these chemicals.
Why?
Because these chemicals not only kill pests of the target crop, they also kill beneficial microbes in the soil biome which help to create fertility by converting nutrients to make them available for the crop plant. In the same way a lack of a healthy gut microbiome leads to disease, so to with the soil biome. In many cases, if they didn't spray, they wouldn't have to.
Your thoughts …………………?
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Thank you … I'm unsure of the proper method for cleaning fruits and veggies with baking soda.
Soaking or scrubbing?
Scrubbing could be effective since baking soda is a mild abrasive, but will just soaking work as well?
I'm thinking of things like lettuce, which can't be scrubbed.