— Harriett S. Bates

This is one near and dear to me as well. So I typically buy organic most of the time. But not everything because nobody can afford that on average organic ingredients are about 20% more per pound or per ingredient than it is for other ingredients. So if you're on a budget, which pretty much everybody is you need to be able to pick and choose what works for you. So what I do is I pick a system on saying like Okay, am I going to directly put that pesticide into my mouth? So two great examples are say a bell pepper versus broccoli, right so that bell pepper. Like I can it's got a very smooth skin on the outside, right so I can wash that pepper just like with water is fine. Some people do like a vinegar water mixtures. Sometimes a flavor comes out on that just make sure you rinse the vinegar off of it as well. But I'm gonna wash that pepper on the outside and get most of the pesticides off using that water or the water vinegar mixture on the outside of those and get those pesticides off the outside. Now, there will still be pesticides that are in the ground and a grown up through the pepper plant as well too, but you're getting the majority of those pesticides or sprayed on it off of the outside as you're eating it now something like the broccoli. No matter how much I wash the broccoli those pesticides that were sprayed on the broccoli getting between every little tiny floret in there. And it's almost impossible to clean all of those pesticides off of it. So if I'm going to look at that, I might buy the pepper as a conventional Source, but I would probably always buy the broccoli as an organic Source, um, just because I can't wash it as well as I want to so a great example of that is berries, like my two toddlers eat berries all the time and I always buy organic organic berries, especially when it comes to raspberries and things like that because there's all those little tiny bits and pieces and if you're spraying that with a pesticide, there's no way to get those clean. You can go over your calendar or you know to clean those out as much as you can and it's really not going to get all those pesticides out. So I buy organic, you know, like raspberries and broccoli or cauliflower all the time where I don't get it, where as the Pepper if you know depending on the day, I might get it organic, but I probably I'm not gonna have a problem with it. I'm going conventional now even more so are things that have skins. So say like a banana right like that banana. Well, I can peel the outside of that skin right off of that banana and most of the pesticides have been sprayed on the outside. So I'm not worried as much about that. You know, again the will be something that go down through the the tree stock and grow up through the bananas, but we're talking about directly putting the pesticide into your mouth. You know, that's a different story. So organic versus conventional is really up to the the individual and quite honestly the affordability because organic is more expensive. Now the crazy thing is if you think back to it are great great grandparents 100% eight organic. All the time conventional is something was only introduced in the 1950s as a result to the boom and population the Baby Boomers and to be able to make sure that was enough supply for everybody. They started spraying pesticides some things to be able to keep pests away to guarantee that crops would actually grow if they planted them. This is come under a lot of scrutiny and you know, it's definitely considered better if it's an organic product, but it's more expensive at the same time. So you have to be able to pick and choose what works best for you. And for your family.