Which Fruits and Veggies Have The Most and Least Amount of Pesticides?

Fruits and veggies should be the mainstay of any healthy diet, but the pesticides can be a turn-off to many, and with good reason since pesticides are toxic. Obviously organic is the best way to go to ensure a pesticide-free fruit or vegetable, but it can be expensive and isn't always an option. But at least now there's a list of the fruits and vegetables that contain the most and the least amounts of pesticide, so we can make better choices.

Do you know which is the worst offender, as far as pesticides go?

According to Environmental Working Group (EWG), ironically, it's that fruit we're supposed to eat once a day to keep the doctor away- yes, the almighty 'forbidden fruit' apple has the greatest amount of pesticide residue even after washing and peeling it. So if you have the choice, you should opt for organic apples, if at all possible.

After apples comes celery (which I'm not fond of), but some of my favorite fruits and veggies made EWG's dirty dozen list:

3. strawberries
4. peaches
5. spinach
6. nectarines-imported
7. grapes-imported
8. sweet bellpeppers (meh)
9. potatoes
10. blueberries-domestic
11. lettuce (what's salad without lettuce?)
12. kale/collard greens

Peaches, strawberries and blueberries? Say it isn't so! The three fruits that top my cereal, on my cereal mornings. Am not happy about this at all.

EWG also has a list of the 15 cleanest- or the ones with the least amount of pesticides. They suggest not eliminating fruits and veggies altogether, but encourage people to choose the recommended 5 servings from the Clean 15, if you can't go organic. Thankfully there are some good ones to choose from including onions, mangoes, watermelon and sweet potatoes. 

You can find the full list of 53 fruits and veggies here.