All those luscious looking berries, succulent framed oranges, gleaming apples and refreshing vibrant leafy greens may give you a joy ride of consuming healthy nutritious foods when you are having them. They taste great and they look beautiful. What’s there not to love? The fact of the matter is that you are not alone at feeling that about these wonders of nature! Most of this produce looks just as appealing to the scrawny slithering bugs infesting the farm fields as well, and this is where the story of pesticides begins!

Pesticides are chemicals that have been specially and essentially designed to keep pests, insects, bugs, fungi and bacteria away from farm produce we eat. These food items get sprayed with pesticides at the farm and even after being carried on to the stores for further selling, they are covered with that chemical. These chemicals can have adverse effects on certain aspect of life, for example problems with motor skills, behavioral disorders and possibly delayed developmental growth.

However, if you are willing to make a few lifestyle changes, you can cut short the consumption of pesticides in your food to quite an extent! Here are some tips you can use to reduce pesticides in your food intake:

Buy Organic and Local Produce!

If you buy organic produce from your local vendors, you are more likely to encounter pesticide free produce! In order to make sure the food is grown organically, check for a sticker on the food item and see I it starts with a ‘9’ and is 5 digit long. If yes, then you are safe, it is organic! Organic food is more expensive and can be a strain if on a budget. In such as case, you may want to purchase only those food items in organic that your family consumes the most. This way you will be able to reduce pesticides in food, pertaining to your household.

Wash The Food Items Rigorously!

Sometimes just rinsing the fruits and vegetables and all the foods with pesticides with plain water does not do the trick. The good part however is that, these days’ fruit and vegetables washes are readily available in the market. Get a bottle and read the instructions at the back to get optimal results to get rid of pesticides in foods you use!

Grow Your Own!

Subsistence farming has always been a very popular culture in more farming oriented areas. You grow your own produce and you consume it within the family! If you have space as big as 400 square feet, you can very well take a leap of faith and work on this idea to deal with pesticides in foods you eat most! If you grow your own produce, you will automatically be extremely careful as to what products you use and stay far at bay from pesticides!

Educate Yourself!

A relatively all number of vegetables and fruits, to be precise 12, is highly concentrated with much of the pesticide usage. These food items are termed as the dirty dozen and are highly pesticide infested! These items include the following:

• Celery
• Peaches
• Strawberries
• Apples
• Domestic blueberries
• Nectarines
• Sweet bell peppers
• Spinach, kale and collard greens
• Cherries
• Potatoes
• Grapes
• Lettuce

Staying at bay from just these 12 commercially produced fruits and veggies will reduce the pesticides in foods you end up consuming remarkably! Knowing which items consist of a higher proportion of pesticides will make you more conscious at washing them with extra care, limiting consumption and taking care of peeling skins properly!