Simply Washing May NOT Rid Produce Of Pesticide Residues

We are cautioned to wash all fresh produce well before consuming it. Especially leafy greens. And that’s good advice. But new science has revealed that some pesticides can penetrate the skins of fruits and veggies, making peeling advisable…

The research from which this revelation emerges was designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a new type of imaging in detecting pesticides on produce. But it also, unexpecterdly, revealed that some common pesticides can get right into the skins of some fruits and veggie. What’s more, some have been found to penetrate through to the skin, to the inner pulp.

Long techno-story short…

The researchers, whose work is published this month in the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters, were reporting on a new lab analysis technique called Raman imaging.

We need not go into its scientific and engineering intricacies here. It’s not the technique, but what it revealed that we’re interested in.

What they found

“Notably, the distribution of pesticides in the apple peel and pulp layers is visualized through Raman imaging, confirming that the pest-icides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer […],” the study report concludes. “Thus, the risk of pesticide ingestion from fruits cannot be avoided by simple washing other than peeling.”

However, the team observed that, while peeling isn’t guaranteed to remove all the penetrating pest-icides, it’s better than doing nothing at all.

The takeaway

Study report Co-author Dongdong Ye, a professor at China’s Anhui Agricultural University, told The Guardian, “Rather than fostering undue apprehension, the research posits that peeling can effect-ively eliminate nearly all pesticide residues, contrasted with the frequently recommended practice of washing [alone].”

So, just take a deep breath. And dig your peeler out from the back of the gadget drawer.

My take

There are some veggies you always peel, anyway. Well, I do. But we have noted a recent culinary recent fashion for leaving the peels on fruits like apples, and root veggies such as potatoes and carrots. Other researchers maintain (not incorrectly) that much of the inherent goodness of these foods is contained in the skins.

I’ll leave the risk analysis up to the scientists. But I’m going to continue peeling my rooties and firm fruits.

~ Maggie J.