Unless you're unusually well-off or grow all your own food, it's unlikely that every single food item you buy will be organic.
So, many of us wonder which products to spend the extra pence or pounds on for organic certification. During organic fortnight, I found that most people have decided for themselves which foods they prefer to buy organic, but how often are these beliefs based on a patchy version of the truth, or pure guesswork?
For fruit and vegetables, the closest I've come to an official line on this list compiled by The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a not-for-profit environmental research organisation. Its 'dirty dozen'; foods that are more likely to be coated in pesticides, includes peaches, apples and strawberries, while it urges less caution on onions and avocados.
Elsewhere, pesticide expert Clare Butler-Ellis has widened the list to include other foodstuffs; she cites flour, potatoes, bread, apples, pears, grapes, strawberries, speciality green beans, tomatoes and cucumber as all being products that receive the highest amount of chemical treatment. Worst of all, she claims however, is celery, which "has the highest pesticide count of all vegetables".
Remember, also that cotton farming is responsible for 10% of all chemical pesticides used worldwide and 22% of all insecticides; a shockingly high statistic considering that only 2.5% of the world's farmland is used for cotton. You'll therefore be doing the world a big favour if you opt for organic garments.
Good article. You are right that it is not always possible, from a finances point of view, to buy organic everything. So thanks for the info on which items to try and go for.