Organic Buying Guide
By Cindy Salmon
WIN for Alaska, Inc. Wellness Consultant
& Registered Dietician

What is Organic Anyway?
All foods are organic because they contain carbon, but foods with the USDA Organic logo are produced according to certain production standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Organic crops are grown without synthetic pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or biotechnology. Organic meat and poultry are raised on organically grown feed, without synthetic growth hormones or antibiotics, and the animals are not confined all of the time.

Why should you care?
Organically grown foods have less synthetic contaminants. Decreasing exposure to contaminants is important for reducing cancer risk.

How can you afford organic foods?
With the cost of living on the rise and winter fuel bills looming in the future, it might be getting harder to justify the cost of consuming organic produce. Read on to learn when buying organic is absolutely worth it.

The Dirty Dozen & the Cleanest 15
Thanks to information compiled by the Environmental Working Group, you can refer to The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides In Produce, which identifies The Dirty Dozen and the Cleanest 15 produce. Produce on the list is ranked by pesticide residue, using results of nearly 87,000 tests collected by the USDA and FDA between 2000 and 2007.

Produce on The Dirty Dozen list has either thin skin or no skin, so they are exposed to more pesticides. They are absolutely worth buying organic:

Peach
Apple
Bell Pepper
Celery
Nectarine
Strawberries
Cherries
Kale
Lettuce
Grapes (Imported)
Carrot
Pear

Need to watch the food budget?
Save money by buying non-organically grown produce on the Cleanest 15 list. The Cleanest 15 are onion, avocado, sweet corn, pineapple, mango, asparagus, sweet peas, kiwi, cabbage, eggplant, papaya, watermelon, broccoli, tomato and sweet potato. The Cleanest 15 have thicker skin, which gives them more protection from pesticides.

If you don’t see your favorite produce here, check out the full list at www.foodnews.org.

Our greatest risk for exposure to pesticides comes from meat and dairy products. When animals are fed crops grown with pesticides, the fat-soluble pesticides are stored in the fatty tissue of the livestock, and passes from generation to generation via breast milk. For example, traces of a common home lawn and garden pesticide called Chlordane that was banned in the 1980s is still found in tissue of mammals, poultry and dairy. We can’t change what happened 20 years ago, but we can make food choices that contain less contaminants.

Choosing a plant based diet with small amounts of nonfat dairy and lean meat or poultry can decrease your risk of pesticide exposure AND reduce your risk for chronic disease — talk about bang for your buck!

References:
The Environmental Working Group: www.foodnews.org
USDA National Organic Program: www.ams.usda.gov/nop/indexNet.htm

Organic Food Resources www.foodnews.org

www.fruitsandveggies
morematters.org

Alaska Grown Food Resource
www.alaskagrown.org

Fairbanks Community Cooperative Market
www.fairbankscoop.org