Top Five List

1. 1.    (In Season) Eat Local
   

2. 2.    (Out of Season) Eat Flash Frozen or Home Frozen
   

3. 3.    Eat Nutrient Rich
   

4. 4.   Eat Organic or Almost Organic
   

5. 5.    Know your fruits & vegetables, inside and out
   

Eat Local:

The healthiest way to approach choosing your produce is to buy in-season, fresh, and local.  All three put together guarantee that your fruits and vegetables carries with them the most possible nutrients.  Non-local produce not only contains fewer nutrients but contains more chemicals (health risk) and consumes more fossil fuels in transport (environmental risk).  More chemicals are introduced to protect produce from insects, rodents, and other pests during long periods of transport & storage.  Imported produce outside the U.S. or Canada has also been shown to contain higher pesticide residues (chemical loads) and may be less regulated in pesticide use, both before and after harvest. 

Eat Flash Frozen

Flash frozen fruits and vegetables are frozen shortly after picking or harvest to ensure that the best possible nutrient value is maintained.  Out of season, flash frozen produce offers an alternative to imported (”fresh”) fruits and vegetables whose chemical (pesticide) load may be unknown or elevated and whose nutrient value may have decreased drastically during transport. 

Eat Nutrient Rich

The health benefits of eating fresh fruits and vegetables are proven, without question, to be some of the highest of any of the foods we eat.  Consuming a variety of nutrients via our fruits and vegetables is one of the very best things we can do for our bodies. Pesticide and chemical contamination of produce, however, remains contested and is often shown to be much lower than other sources of environmental health degradation (ranked 28th among all environmental health risks in one key study).    Research is starting to show that the less treated (fewer pesticides) a fruit or vegetable has, the more it needs to fend for itself, and the more nutrients it produces. 

Eat Organic or Nearly Organic

It is easy to think that there is no downside to eating organic.  However, organic farming cannot provide the food supply necessary to feed our increasing population in the United States (since it consumes more space than other farming practices), nor is it without its detrimental effects on farmland; eating organic may remain a privilege for the higher socio-economic classes (leaving the poor disenfranchised).  The lack of proven health benefit for organic foods is typical in the complexity of the causal chain (proving cause and effect) of environmental health; however, it is likely that the key benefit of organic may evolve to be increased nutrient value rather than significantly reduced negative health effects (due to pesticide residues).  It is also very likely that one step below organic (certification-in-process organic farms or integrated pest management practices) may be just as beneficial to health.  Eat organic selectively and when possible, choose near-organic farming processes as an adequate substitute.

Know your Fruits and Vegetables

Whenever possible, know the trade-off between the nutrient value and the negative health benefits (induced by man-made pesticides or agricultural soil contamination) of your fruits and vegetables.  It is important not only to know how many pesticides are present in the residue of certain fruits and vegetables but also which ones and how much (which correlate to the bottom line ... the health effect).  Pesticide (and agricultural soil) residues on plants vary both with location and with farming practice.  Gather as much information as possible regarding the produce you eat.  Critically evaluate sources of information for political or corporate bias and for the relationship between the information provided and overall health benefit & risk. 

As part of our mission, our recommendations are delivered as a Balance among: 

1. (i)    Nutrient value,
   

2. (ii)   Loss thereof in transport, and
   

3. (iii)Chemical contamination (including but not limited to pollutant uptake from agricultural soils and various forms of pesticides). 
   

so that the individual consumer can make choices directly for good health.  

Our information is updated and supplemented regularly to reflect the latest research and testing results.