You’re eating apples wrong – washing fruit doesn’t remove pesticides, study finds

An apple a day … can fill your body with pesticides.

A new study suggests that washing fruit, a precaution taken by many consumers, is not enough to remove toxic chemicals and pesticide residues.

Published Wednesday in the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters, the study adds new intelligence to the debate over the health risks of pesticides and what, if any, the threshold is for consuming contaminated produce.

The purpose of the study was to share a technique that researchers hoped would improve the detection of pesticides in food products, but also proved that washing doesn’t cut it when it comes to removing the chemicals.

As the study says, “cleaning operations cannot completely remove pesticides.”

Using their method to examine pesticide contamination in an apple, the researchers observed that the pesticides went much further than skin depth, penetrating the peel and entering the pulp layer.

However, when the apple skin and a top layer of pulp were removed, the contamination was significantly reduced.

Dongdong Ye, a professor at the China School of Materials and Chemistry at Anhui Agricultural University and the paper’s author, hopes people will reach for the peeler instead of panicking.

“Rather than fueling unnecessary fear, the research confirms that peeling can effectively eliminate almost all pesticide residues, in contrast to the often recommended practice of washing.”

The study found unequivocally that “the risk of ingesting pesticides from fruit cannot be avoided by simple washing other than peeling”.

However, while shedding the skin can help prevent exposure to chemicals, it also reduces nutritional value.

As Healthline notes, a raw apple with skin contains up to 332% more vitamin K, 142% more vitamin A, 115% more vitamin C, 20% more calcium and up to 19% more potassium than an apple. peeled.

In March, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit organization that advocates for a cleaner food supply, released its infamous “Dirty Dozen” list of the most pesticide-prone foods.

The group found that 75% of conventional fresh fruit and vegetables sampled contained residues of potentially harmful chemicals and placed apples at number 8 on their list of pesticide packaging products.

In May, Consumer Reports found regarding pesticide levels that posed “significant risks”.” for consumers in 20% of the fruits and vegetables it tested. The nonprofit called on the Environmental Protection Agency to ban organophosphate and carbamate pesticides and lower legal limits of contamination.

In a contradictory report, the USDA claimed that 99% of the products they tested contained pesticide residues within legal contamination limits and that they did not “pose a risk to consumer health and are safe.”

They also claim that more than a quarter of the products tested had “no detectable residue at all”.

The EWG is careful to note that the health benefits of a new diet “weigh the risks of pesticide exposure.”

However, those who want to limit exposure should choose to eliminate pesticides and eat organic, where only natural pesticides can be used whenever possible.