How to get rid of Pesticides from Vegetables and Fruits?

In these hard economic times not each and everyone who wanted to be healthy can always eat fresh and organic vegetables and fruits. It is simply costly to buy them and thus one just tends to purchase and eat regular vegetables and fruits with pesticides. Last month The Environmental Working group, a U.S. non profit health organization reported that most of the vegetables and fruits other than organic contains high amount of pesticides.{link} Now this report simply puts all those like me and you in jeopardy. So what are our choices, how can we remove those pesticides? Here are some of the ways to work on that, with their drawbacks :

1] Cleaning as our Granny would do :
The first thing that was taught to me when dealing with kind of fruits or vegetables would be to wash them under tap water for at least one minute. An age old method to clean not just pesticides but also external dust and germs this method does remains very effective. Not only this is some kind of fairy tale but the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES), stands with that folklore with its extensive study showing the effectiveness of this method.
Draw backs:

• If pesticides are in the system that hardly can be touched with such methods.
• Same remains true with wax coated fruits, washing does not helps.

2] Peeling:
Another method which I completely disagree with remains true with all fruits and vegetables those are waxed and have skin like apples would be pealing the skin. At least we do not ingest that wax applied on the fruits.
Drawbacks:

• Skin in most vegetable and fruits sometimes do contain high amount of nutrients that are lost with this method.

3] Steaming:
Steaming is a method that has been recommended by many with either peeling or washing. Leafy vegetables can lose lot of volatile chemicals from them when steamed in perfect way. Yes one need to avoid over or under steam otherwise it’s of no use.
Drawbacks:

• Over cook your vegetables, you lose nutrients.
• Again not effective with pesticides in the system of the vegetables and fruits .

So it’s clear we can take some of those pesticides, but not a lot from our fruits and vegetables. Meaning we are bound to eat some of those poison daily accepts it or not. The only option that we are left with is to make sure we keep our immune system healthy to fight that stuff internally. What is your take on it?
Do you use any other method to clean your vegetables and fruits let us know too?

Posted by Sudeep

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