Taking your family down the organic highway can be time consuming – and expensive. Wouldn’t it be nice to apply the 80/20 rule here? It turns out you can. If you buy organic options of just the five items below, you will have gotten the most benefit with the least effort.
1. Milk
2. Potatoes
3. Peanut butter
4. Ketchup
5. Apples
Why? These are the most common kid foods in which the organic version is significantly less toxic than the non-organic option. Many foods, including broccoli, onions, and foods with peels like avocados, bananas and oranges, come to market with much less pesticide residue even when they are not grown organically.
The Blue Lake take on it: We love this type of thinking. You don’t have time to keep up on every bulletin or develop a 10-page plan for strategic grocery shopping. Thank you, Dr. Alan Greene, the author of Raising Baby Green, for this simple guideline. If you want to read more on this topic, and see some interesting parent responses, visit Tara Parker-Pope’s blog in the New York Times Health section.
By Judy on 12/25/07 in Parents, Food, Columns, Healthy Cooking, Diet, Clever Currents
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December 28th, 2007 at 10:39 am
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December 30th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Very good article.
Two notes: Chicken has more hormones and pesticides then beef or pig. And Off season fruits from Latin America that are non organic often sprayed with chemicals like DDT.
e.g. My sister, a Pediatric Nerologist, told me that while she was living in Costa Rica that she observed the farmers always feeding their kids organic-natural food. But she also saw DDT being used on bananas. She asked who was eating the DDT food. The locals replied that the United States paid good money for the DDT food. But that they, the locals, wood never feed their own children the stuff because it was not healthy.
I was not sure what to say after hearing that.