Pesticides and herbicides get absorbed by the crops they’re sprayed on but most of the chemicals are left on the outer most part of the produce. Organic is better than conventional but organic certification does allow some pesticide and herbicide usage. Produce usually looks clean at the store but there’s plenty of pesticide residue on them.

The apples you buy in grocery stores are already washed, usually in a bleach solution, and rinsed before they’re sold, says study author Lili He, Ph.D., assistant professor of food science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The purpose of this, however, is to remove dirt and kill any harmful microbes that may be on the fruit. “It’s not intended to wash away pesticides,” He says.

Consumer Reports

Many people are buying designed to wash produce, or scrubbing foods in running water, or using bleach, but according to new research, these options don’t do much good. But baking soda does.

Surface pesticide residues were most effectively removed by sodium bicarbonate (baking soda, NaHCO₃) solution…”

Effectiveness of Commercial and Homemade Washing Agents in Removing Pesticide Residues on and in Apples

The study used thiabendazole and phosmet as the pesticides. Apples were exposed to the pesticides for 24 hours, “applied at a concentration of 125 ng/cm².”

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

The authors say that a baking soda washing solution can completely remove thiabendazole and phosmet surface residues of apples in about 15 minutes. That’s a lot of washing! The study authors are not clear if the produce needs to be scrubbed or just left to soak or what, but we suspect just letting them soak in a solution of water and baking soda for fifteen minutes should work. We’re attempted contact with a couple of the authors and are awaiting clarification on this. We’ll update if we hear back.

Their results showed that 20% of the thiabendazole and 4.4% of the phosmet penetrated into the apples following the exposure. So it’s not practically possible to remove all of the chemicals from the produce.

 In practical application, washing apples with NaHCO₃ solution can reduce pesticides mostly from the surface. Peeling is more effective to remove the penetrated pesticides; however, bioactive compounds in the peels will become lost too.

It should also be noted that different fruits and vegetables will absorb chemicals at different rates and some will have better results from baking soda washing than others.

Recommended Reading:

How To Heal Your Gut

Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

How many vegetables and fruits do you eat each day? Are you getting the maximum benefit from your food choices?

In the early 2000s, The World Health Organization (WHO) began a campaign to raise awareness of the connection between health and adequate fruit and vegetable consumption. The quality of health wasn’t the only issue. Mortality itself was measured in units of fruit and vegetable consumption.

WHO estimated 2.7 million lives could be saved each year if fruit and vegetable consumption was raised to a sufficient level. They stated that low consumption of fruits and vegetables was one of the top ten risk factors for global mortality. The recommendation equaled a minimum intake of 400g (14 ounces) of fruits and vegetables excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers. This is about 5 servings a day. This level of consumption reduced the risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

The latest research says we should do better. Now the recommendation is 10 servings (800 grams or 28 ounces) of fruits and vegetables per day.

The study conducted by scientists from the Imperial College London, analyzed 95 studies on fruit and vegetable intake. It included “up to 2 million people,” assessing “up to 43,000 cases of heart disease, 47,000 cases of stroke, 81,000 cases of cardiovascular disease, 112,000 cancer cases, and 94,000 deaths.” Their conclusion was an estimated reduction of 7.8 million annual premature deaths if everyone followed this dietary advice.

When compared to not eating any fruits and vegetables, ten servings a day was associated with:

• 24 % reduced risk of heart disease
• 33 % reduced risk of stroke
• 28 % reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
• 13 % reduced risk of total cancer
• 31 % reduction in premature death

While we at OLM and many others promoting a plant-based diet agree with this conclusion, we believe there is more to healthy eating than the volume of vegetables. The study did say not all fruits and vegetable were equal, but it did not stress the need for a large variety of vegetables and fruits or to choose organic and mostly raw.

We’d also like to see five servings a day versus ten, and what about 15? When do the benefits wear off? Raw or cooked? Another question this raises for us is, are we needing to double our intake of produce because of nutrient depletion in our soil?

What we do know is that gut health provides the basis of our health. Gut health determines the strength and efficiency of our immune system, the intake of nutrients to fuel our entire body, the creation of many of our neurotransmitters, and the ability to detox. An unbalanced microbiome allows an overgrowth of one bacteria over others or an overgrowth of Candida or parasites. A leaky gut is like a sewer leaking filth and disease into the bloodstream.

We have always recommended a diet consisting of 80% raw, organic produce– a wide variety of vegetables and fruit, mostly vegetables. In addition, we recommend the elimination of all artificial colors, flavorings, and preservatives; refined sugar; trans fats; MSG; and GMOs. The perfect diet is all real food, with no packaged, processed concoctions added in. Real food doesn’t have an ingredient list. There are no added chemicals.

It is important that your vegetable and fruit consumption includes a wide variety. Every fruit or vegetable contains its own combination of nutrients. We need a variety to consume as many nutrients as possible. In addition, we don’t want to overfeed just one or a few of our friendly or not so friendly bacteria or yeast by favoring one food over others. We want to maintain balance in all ways. For instance, if all of our fruit choices are high sugar, Candida thrives. We need a diverse microbiome to fend off a wide array of pathogens and to achieve this, we need a wide variety of nutrients to feed a wide variety of helpful microbiome bacteria.

If you are ill or you don’t feel well, changing your diet will change your life. We’ve seen it over and over again. If we eat a perfect diet until all traces of disease are gone, we heal very quickly. No supplement can achieve the change of health we accomplish by eating one large, organic salad filled with 15 or more vegetables each day.

If you are ready to change your life, change your diet. Go for 10+ a day. And remember, variety is key! Check out the salad recipe in the first article below.

Further Reading:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Your Guide to Root Vegetables – Health Benefits, Recipes, and More
• The Difference Between Heirlooms, Hybrids, and GMOs
• How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System
• How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Sources:

• Eating more fruits and vegetables may prevent millions of premature deaths – Imperial College London
• We Should Be Eating 10 Portions Of Fruit And Veg A Day To Live Longer – IFL Science.com
• Forget five a day, eat 10 portions of fruit and veg to cut risk of early death – The Guardian

We all know that fruit is good for us. The steady stream of research and articles on the subject reminds us constantly of the amazing antioxidant benefits of blueberries and how an apple a day keeps the doctor away. When we go to the supermarket, we know we are supposed to do the healthy thing and load up on fresh fruits, right? But are those fruits really fresh and really good for us? How far did those strawberries have to travel and what did they spray on them to keep them looking “fresh” in the middle of winter? Were they grown in a way that positively or negatively impacted the waterways and wildlife in that area, not to mention the farmers who grew them?

You can always make the choice to “vote with your wallet” as I like to say, and buy certified organic from the store, but this can be expensive for many of us, and the reality is still that if it’s not in season where we live, it had to travel a long ways to get to our produce section.

The good news is, there are many ways you can add more fruit to your diet, and still keep it healthy, local and good for the environment. There are plenty of small farms out there growing tree fruits and berries, and this is the perfect opportunity to get to know them. Buying, picking and growing fruit in quantity when it is in season is very economical, and although fresh fruit may not be available all throughout the year, there are some simple ways to store and preserve it at home so that you always know exactly where it came from.

Visit Your Local Farmer’s Market

If your town or urban neighborhood has a farmer’s market, this is the place to find your local fruit. Farmer’s Markets give you an opportunity to have a conversation with farmers directly about how they grow their crops, whether they are organic, and which varieties they recommend. Farmers tend to highlight freshness with the produce they bring to market, so you will know it was picked the day before or even early that morning. Some farmer’s markets also continue through the holiday season, allowing you to continue buying local fruit that farmers have stored in their own cold storage.

The other added benefit of a trip to your local farmer’s market is the community building aspect of getting to know your farmer and your fellow like-minded locavores. Throw in some live music and healthy food carts, and you can’t go wrong for a fun weekend activity. When a fruit is in season, expect to find whole flats available at discount prices that you can preserve for the year ahead. Some farmers also offer “seconds” or not-so-perfect boxes of fruit at a deep discount, that is perfectly good for canning or freezing.

U-Pick

I can’t recommend this option highly enough, especially if you have kids. While the low prices and feeling of self-sufficiency are reason enough to get your fruit in this manner, what it comes down to is that it is really just plain fun.

What’s not to love about making an outing to visit a farm, spending some time outside picking fruit, snacking as you go and maybe having a picnic lunch while you’re out there? You will get to know firsthand exactly where your fruit came from as you create good memories and start traditions to pass down in your family.

Farmers charge less per pound for fruit they don’t have to spend time picking, plus they will usually offer a discounted price based on your quantity, so stocking up for the year at a U-Pick farm really does pay off.

Grow Your Own!

You don’t need a lot of land to grow a lot of food. Depending on the size of your yard, you can plant fruit trees, berry bushes, and strawberry beds to create a productive, edible landscape. Raspberry patches can produce an incredible amount of fruit, strawberry beds planted with ever-bearing varieties can be harvested multiple times throughout the growing season, and a single dwarf fruit tree that is properly pruned can produce a massive amount of fruit. From the five blueberry bushes growing in our yard, we were able to freeze 30 quarts and have fresh berries to eat all summer.

Even if you live in a small space, raspberries and blueberries can grow in pots, dwarf fruit trees have been developed for patio growing, and strawberries can be planted in vertical containers with holes on the sides or in old gutters along your fence or balcony. You may not have room to grow enough quantity for preserving, but you can grow your fresh day-to-day eating fruit for the summer and stock up at the farmer’s market for long-term storage. Aside from the cost of plants, soil amendments and your water bill, this is a very low-cost option for securing your yearly fruit supply.

Go Gleaning

If you take a walk around your neighborhood in the fall, you may notice fruit trees on abandoned lots and in public spaces dropping fruit all over the ground. Urban foraging, or gleaning, is a great way to get your local, organic fruit and keep it from going to waste. Fallen fruit in parks and public areas creates a lot of mess and clean-up labor when it falls on sidewalks and lawns, so you are doing landscape workers a big favor.

You may also have a neighbor who is too busy or physically unable to harvest the fruit in their yard. It never hurts to ask if you can harvest from their trees, and offer them a portion of the fruit in exchange. It’s a good way to get to know the people in your neighborhood and build community. Some places even have gleaning groups that go around and help each other harvest fruit to share amongst themselves and donate some to local food banks. It is truly the “waste not, want not” principle in action, and it’s absolutely free.

Go Wild!

Few things can rival the flavor of wild berries, freshly picked from the vine. Blackberries, huckleberries, black cap raspberries, and a whole abundance of delicious fruits grow all around us in forests, fields, and the wild spaces. In some places, blackberries are so invasive that you don’t have to go far to find a patch to pick from. This, like U-picking, is a great activity for those with kids. Many families still carry on traditions of going on outings up into the high mountains to pick huckleberries in the late summer, to freeze and use in family recipes from jams to pies.

One of the best resources for where to find the best picking spots are your own grandparents or the elderly people you know. They have likely spent many a day out picking wild berries in their youth, and would enjoy sharing their experience and pointing you in the right direction. The other great thing about this method of gathering fruit is that it doesn’t cost a thing.

Preserve the Bounty

Here is the important key to keeping your fruit supply local. Many of us live in places where fruit doesn’t grow all year. Rather than going to the grocery store for a pint of strawberries from Mexico in January, why not thaw a pint of local strawberries from your freezer? Instead of buying a bag of dried fruit with added sweetener and preservatives, you can snack on a handful of delicious dried plums from your backyard.

If you spend the time stocking up over the summer, all the fruit you need is right there until it comes back into season the following year. Freezing, canning, dehydrating, and cold storing are all fairly simple methods of keeping your fruit supply local through the winter months. Things like apples, pears, and kiwis will often keep for several months in root cellars, garages, or any place that stays cool without freezing. Berries can be frozen in baggies or containers. Peaches, plums, and pears can be canned in a simple honey syrup, and jams can be made out of just about any kind of fruit you like.

For folks that are just plain busy, your freezer is your friend. Once you have gone about gathering and storing your fruit for the year, you will gain the satisfaction of doing things for yourself, some peace of mind, and closer connections with your food and your farmer. The Ball Blue Book of Preserving, and The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol Costenbader are a couple of excellent resources with instructions and recipes for canning and other preservation methods. Also, most state universities offer Master Food Preserver programs through their extension offices, similar to the Master Gardener program.

A Mountain Hearth Recipe for Strawberry Jam and Life

Ingredients

A local Farm
Friends and People You Love
4 cups fresh picked strawberries
3/4 to 2 cups sugar
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup water
3 tsp Pomona’s Pectin
4+ tsp Pomona’s calcium water (comes with pectin)

Take a trip out to your favorite local farm with your friends and the people that you love. Make a day of it, pack a picnic lunch, and enjoy the experience. Pick as large a quantity of strawberries as you can manage processing, and “vote with your wallet” to support your local farmer. Then it’s time to get your supplies, get home, and get to work, because fresh strawberries don’t keep long.

Mash the strawberries and stir in lemon juice and sugar. I always go with the middle ground and use about a cup. The cool thing about Pomona’s Pectin is that you can use whatever type or amount of sweetener you want. I like having options. Then boil your water and pulse in a food processor while adding pectin powder. Blend for about 2 minutes. Stir this into your fruit mash. Then add the calcium water until the jam starts to jell. Ladle into clean jars leaving about an inch head space and freeze. I keep mine up to two years in the freezer and it’s a wonderful year-round treat!

Recommended Reading:

• 80% Raw Food Diet

Sources:

• A Recipe for Strawberry Jam and Life – A Mountain Hearth
• National Farmers’ Market Directory
• U-Pick Farm Directory
• Create an Edible Landscape – Mother Earth News
• One Green World (Edible Plants Nursery)
• USDA Cooperative Extension Service Locator Map
• Ball Canning
• Pomona’s Pectin

We generally label foods as fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts by their taste, appearance, and use. Not all vegetables are vegetables, and not all fruits are fruits. And strangely, not all nuts are nuts; some are seeds, and some are actually fruits. Botanists have very specific criteria to categorize fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts that often do not line up with our common definitions.

A fruit is the ovary of a plant that develops from the flower. Fruits contain seeds. So root vegetables like potatoes, beets, onions, garlic, radishes, turnips, etc. are all vegetables. All your greens – spinach, chard, kale, collard greens, mustard greens, etc. – are vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus – are definitely vegetables.

“Veggies” That Are Actually Fruits

• Tomato
• Snow peas
• String beans
• Sugar snap peas
• Pumpkin
• Avocado
• Eggplant
• Cucumbers
• All squashes (including zucchini, yellow, spaghetti, acorn and more)
• Peppers (including bell peppers and hot peppers)
• Okra
• Olives
• Corn (the kernels are technically the fruit of the plant, though corn is usually classified as a grain.)

The botanical definition of a true nut is a hard-shelled pod that contains both the fruit and the seed. Examples of true nuts include chestnuts, hazelnuts, and acorns.

“Nuts” That Are Botanically Fruits

• Almonds
• Peanuts and other groundnuts
• Hazelnuts
• Chestnuts
• Macadamia nuts
• Pistachios
• Coconuts
• Walnuts
• Pecans

“Nuts” That Are Actually Seeds

• Brazil nuts
• Pine nuts
• Cashew nuts

When it comes to how we eat and what we choose to eat, the botanical categories don’t matter. To eat a truly healthy diet, 80% of our diet should consist of fresh, raw, whole, organic produce – more vegetables than fruits. And when we say more vegetables, we are not specifying the botanical definitions, just the common ones.

We generally think of fruits as being sweet. It is the natural sugar content we should watch as we decide our ration of vegetables to fruits. Three to five servings of fruit a day with one large salad consisting of 10-15 vegetables will give you the nutrition you need to thrive. Check out the 80% Raw Food Diet.

 Sources:

• Surprising Truths About Fruits and Vegetables – Live Science
• Nuts – The Fruit Pages
• QI: Quite interesting facts about nuts – The Telegraph