Eighty-five percent of Americans are concerned about pesticides in produce,¹ and rightly so. The US uses about 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides each year,2 and it’s not uncommon for your apple or strawberries to contain two different pesticides… or more.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) insists pesticide residues on food are no cause for concern, even though more than half of all foods tested last year had detectable levels.

While tolerance levels are set that determine upper allowable limits for individual pesticides, there is no legal limit on the number of different pesticides allowed on food. So lurking in your fruit cocktail is probably also a chemical cocktail…

“The effect of these mixtures is untested and unknown,” according to Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D., a toxicologist and executive director of the Consumer Reports Food Safety and Sustainability Center.

Buying Organic Is the Simplest Way to Cut Down on Pesticides in Produce

Ideally, all of the produce you eat would be organic. The largest study of its kind found that people who “often or always” ate organic food had about 65 percent lower levels of pesticide residues compared to those who ate the least amount of organic produce.³

Research also found that organic produce had, on average, 180 times lower pesticide content than conventional produce.⁴ That being said, not everyone has access to a wide variety of organic produce, and it can sometimes be costlier than buying conventional.

One way to save some money while still lowering your risk is by focusing on purchasing certain organic items, while “settling” for others that are conventionally grown.

Animal products, like meat, butter, milk and eggs, are actually the most important to buy organic, since animal products tend to bioaccumulate toxins from their pesticide-laced feed, concentrating them to far higher concentrations than are typically present in vegetables.

Unlike conventional fruits and vegetables, where peeling and washing can sometimes reduce the amounts of these toxins, the pesticides and drugs that these animals get exposed to during their lives can become incorporated into their very tissues, especially their fat. So if you’re on a budget, choose organic animal foods first.