Buying Organic Fruits and Vegetables

Buying Organic Fruits and Vegetables - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. A good rule of thumb is that if you can buy organic, you want to, because organic means they are not using herbicides, pesticides, sprays and they are not genetically modifying the food. So the food that you are taking in is very natural. This is important because a lot of times we are having health concerns or allergies or food sensitivities that we think have to do with the actual food, that are actually have to do with the pesticides and the sprays; so in general my answer would be yes. However, if you cannot afford to buy organically, or organic is not available to you, here is a good rule of thumb: If there is a vegetable or a fruit you eat often, you definitely want to buy it organic. For instance, we are broccoli eaters in my house; we eat a lot of broccoli, so I always buy organic broccoli because I know we are going to be eating a lot of it. If there is something you do not eat quite as often, you can think about maybe buying that conventionally, or taking a look at a local farmer or a farmstand where maybe they are not certified organic, but they do not use pesticides and sprays. Here is another rule of thumb: If you are going to eat the skin of the food, you want to buy it organic because if you are eating the skin of a fruit or vegetable that has pesticides and sprays on it, you are going to be ingesting a lot of those. But, foods that you are not going to be eating the skin of, it is a little less important to have the pesticides and spray free. When it comes to juicing, you are eating the entire plant and you are putting it into a liquid form. Those pesticides and herbicides are going to be even stronger in the juice, so it is definitely important to have an organic product when you are juicing. I use a vegetable wash when I am buying anything that is not organic. A great thing to do is to take some of your greens that maybe are not organic, put them into a bowl of cold water with some of the veggie wash and let them soak for about ten minutes. This will help to lift some of the pesticides and sprays that are laying on the surface of your fruits and vegetables.