Avoiding fruits and vegetables because of pesticides is bad for your health, dietitian warns

I wonder why during National Nutrition Month, when we dietitians are encouraging everyone to increase nutritious foods such as vegetables and fruits, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) releases a report intended to scare people away from these foods.

I am talking about the “dirty dozen.” This list, developed from findings of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ranks the produce with the highest amount of measurable pesticides.

[Editor’s note: Sheah Rarback is a registered dietitian nutritionist on the faculty of the Miller School of Medicine.]

But what does it really mean? A chronic reference dose (RfD) is an estimate of the amount of a chemical a person could be exposed to on a daily basis, throughout a lifetime, which is unlikely to cause appreciable risk or harm. We are exposed daily to potential harmful chemicals.

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If you go to this calculator, you’ll find that an average woman would need to consume 454 servings of strawberries a day to be at a slight risk of negative health outcomes.

Read full, original article: The benefits of eating fruits and veggies far outweigh small exposure to pesticides