The 2013 Dirty Dozen: A Guide to This Year’s Pesticide-Laden Produce

Yesterday, I spent a large part of the afternoon outside in my backyard contemplating how I’m going to turn myself into a gardener this year. My thumbs are black, not green, and in year’s past I’ve tried and failed to grow my own produce more times than I can count.
This year is going to be different, though. In my 2013 food resolutions, I acknowledged that I’m going to accept that I will never be a gardener, but I here I go again attempting to grow more than the stumpy carrots that were pulled from the dirt last fall.

I’ve armed myself with books, websites, notepads and packets of seeds to get started. I’ve clipped articles (that I don’t understand), my husband has built me a raised bed and I’ve been following the sun’s placement in my backyard obsessively for the past two weeks.

While I’ve been doing all of this, I’ve also been wondering what to plant. Do I go for the foods my family loves, the ones the kids hate in hopes of converting them, the easiest ones to grow or do I attempt to cultivate the items listed on the 2013 EWG Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce (i.e. The Dirty Dozen).

While I decide I’ll leave you with the complete list of which foods topped the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list this year, and which ones are considered to be part of the ‘Clean Fifteen.’ Interestingly enough, apples are on the list for the third year in a row, cherry tomatoes and hot peppers are new additions, and blueberries and lettuce have fallen off the charts. Also, while domestically grown kale didn’t meet the Dirty Dozen standards it is ‘commonly contaminated with exceptionally toxic pesticides.’

The 2013 Dirty Dozen