ARTICLE: Good for you? Choose veggies that are pesticide-free
Buffalo News, June 14th, 2010, By Charity Vogel / News Staff Reporter
If you’ve ever sliced a fruit or mashed a vegetable for a growing kid, you’ve no doubt had this thought:
This food is good for this child.
But is that really true?
To be sure, fruits and vegetables are loaded with nutrients that children need to develop in muscle, bone and brain: vitamins, calcium, minerals.
But a new analysis of government health data shows that many American children are also consuming eye-opening amounts of pesticides along with their healthy servings of produce — and that there is a link between pesticide residue in kids’ bodies and the incidence of attention-deficit disorder.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics last month, showed that 94 percent of American kids had detectable levels of pesticide residue in their urine.
Higher levels of pesticide residue in children’s bodies were linked with a greater chance in children of having ADHD, according to the study.
ADHD, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, is becoming more common among children, and involves the inability to focus for any length of time, hyperactive behavior and impulsivity. It can cause children to have trouble learning in school.
In Western New York, where fresh produce fills grocery stores and farm markets from this time of year until the fall, some observers are worried that local kids are consuming too much pesticide matter on their food — as well as in water, and breathing it in the air or walking across it on sprayed lawns.
“When you spray pesticides, you watch the bugs shake all over the place — and then die,” said Kathleen Frank. “It works on their nervous system. We’ve seen our own children having a lot of emotional problems, a lot of nervous problems.”
Frank, produce manager at Feel Rite Fresh Markets on Maple Road in Amherst, stocks the shelves in her store with nothing but organic produce. That means the soil in which the food was grown has no pesticides in it, and the produce itself was grown without pesticide application.
Frank said she knows from her own experience that eating a “cleaner diet” can make you feel better, and she strongly advocates organic produce to those she meets.
It’s not that much more expensive, she said, especially for apples and bananas — foods that children love and typically want to eat.
“[Your food] doesn’t have to have all those pesticides. It doesn’t have to have all that garbage on it,” she said. “Maybe don’t buy those Doritos — you are what you eat.”
At Wegmans, nutritionist Theresa Amborski said that many supermarkets are now offering organic options in most sections of the market, allowing families to pick and choose what they want to buy from those products.
“You can get organic dairy, breads, meats and produce,” stated Amborski, in an e-mail, “and I’m even seeing regular boxed grocery items start to reflect the trend.”
Amborski recommends that consumers educate themselves on organic produce and labeling. Wegmans has a “Shopping for Organics” page on its Web site, www.wegmans.com, with information on terminology and facts about organic products.
And, Amborski advises shoppers to review the “Dirty Dozen” guide published by the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C., which highlights the types of produce most likely to be contaminated by pesticides, as well as a “Clean 15″ of foods likely to be lowest in pesticide residue.
Those guides are available at: www.ewg.org.
At Feel Rite, Frank recommended that consumers wash all produce items whether they are organic or not — fruits and vegetables, with skin and without — thoroughly before using, with a special produce wash or with regular soap.
Even a few small changes in choices, from regular to organic goods, can start the shift in people’s thinking and get them feeling better and healthier, Frank said.
“It’s a thinking process,” she said. “It’s an education process.”
Kathleen Frank, produce manager at Feel-Rite Fresh Market on Maple Road in Amherst, says her store stocks only organic produce.