Consumer Reports found organic foods are, on average, 47 percent more expensive than non-organic.
For people wanting to avoid exposure to pesticides in produce and watch what they spend, there are some fruits and veggies that are more important to buy organic than others, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
EWG annually releases a guide called the “dirty dozen” listing fruits and veggies that contain the most amount of pesticide residues.
“There's a lot of research showing that pesticides can do damage to your gut flora, so their goal is to kill pests, to kill bacteria, to kill this in the environment but when we consume it, we actually kill the environment in our gut as well,” dietitian Erin Gussler said.
Plus, even if the chemicals prove to not be so bad, Gussler said stripping the crops of their defense mechanism is, “Those defense mechanisms are actually a lot of our vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. So, they're actually less nutritious for us if we're protecting them with synthetic pesticides than if we were to let the crops create those mechanisms themselves.”
