These Fruits and Vegetables Should Always Be Washed Before Eating

Fresh fruits and vitamins vegetables can be some of healthiest foods you put on your plate. But the products’ dirty little secret is that they often arrive covered in pesticidesand some varieties are much more likely than others to contain these chemicals.

To help sort the dirtiest produce from the not-so-bad, the food safety nonprofit Environmental Working Group publishes a list of produce most likely to contain pesticides. It’s called The Dirty Dozen, and it’s a cheat sheet on which fruits and vegetables you should always wash.

The group analyzed 46,569 samples of 46 fruits and vegetables that were tested by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture. The No. 1 pesticide offender in the group’s latest survey? strawberries. Popular berries had more overall instances of chemicals found in them than in any other fruit or vegetable included in the extensive analysis.

In general, foods that do not have natural skins or have edible skins, such as apples, vegetables, and berries, are more likely to contain pesticides. Pieces of produce with the skin often removed, such as avocados and pineapples, are much less likely to be tainted. Below you’ll find the 12 foods most likely to contain pesticides and the 15 foods least likely to be contaminated.

The Dirty Dozen: The fruits and vegetables you should always wash

Foods Most Likely to Contain Pesticides, According to FDA and USDA Data.

1. strawberries
2. spinach
3. Cabbage, green cabbage and mustard
4. Peaches
5. Pears
6. Nectarines
7. Apples
8. grapes
9. Beans and chili peppers
10. cherries
11. Blueberries
12. Green beans

The Dirty Dozen is a good indicator designed to alert consumers to the fruits and vegetables that most need a thorough washing. Even a quick water rinse or spray produce wash helps.

You can also avoid much of the potential risk by buying certified organic fruits and vegetables which are free from the use of pesticides in agriculture. Knowing which foods are more likely to contain pesticides can help you decide where to spend a little more money on organic produce. And as I learned in price analysis of organic and non-organic productsthey are not as expensive as you think.

More takeaways from the Dirty Dozen survey

• More than 90% of samples from strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines and grapes tested positive for residues of two or more pesticides.
• A total of 210 different pesticides were found on Dirty Dozen items.
• Of those 210, over 50 different pesticides were found in every crop on the list except cherries.
• Cabbage, cabbage and mustard, as well as chili peppers and bell peppers had the most pesticides detected of any crop, with a total of 103 and 101 pesticides, respectively.

Conversely, the EWG found these 15 fruits and vegetables at least likely to contain pesticides.

The Clean 15: Fruits and vegetables you can skip washing

These are the fruits and vegetables least likely to contain pesticides, according to the study:

1. avocado
2. Sweet corn
3. Pineapple
4. onion
5. papaya
6. Sweet Peas (frozen)
7. Asparagus
8. Honeydew melon
9. Kiwis
10. cabbage
11. mushrooms
12. Mango
13. Sweet potatoes
14. watermelon
15. carrots

The EWG methodology includes six measures of pesticide contamination. The analysis focuses on which fruits and vegetables are most likely to contain one or more pesticides, but does not measure how much of each pesticide is on any given portion of produce. You can read more about EWG’s Dirty Dozen in the published study here.