Pesticides in your produce

When it comes to buying produce someone once told me a good way to decide whether to buy organic. 

"If it has a skin that you remove before you eat it, you generally don't need to worry about pesticides or buying organic".

What that means is that a banana should be low in pesticides because you don't eat the outer skin.  In contrast, an apple should be higher because we eat the skin along with the rest of the fruit.

An article in USA Today was recently brought to my attention.  Apples are the No. 1 produce for pesticide contamination outlines some findings of a report done by public health advocacy group EWG.

There's some nice information on how they scored the 'Dirty Dozen' and the 'Clean 15'.  

I see the online publication doesn't have the graphic but the printed copy had a nice graphic which I'll show below. 

Dirty Dozen (Highest in pesticides) 1. Apples 2. Celery 3. Strawberries 4. Peaches 5. Spinach 6. Nectarines (Imported) 7. Grapes (Imported) 8. Sweet bell peppers 9. Potatoes 10. Blueberries 11. Lettuce 12. Kale/collard greens

Clean 15 (Lowest in pesticides) 1. Onions 2. Corn 3. Pineapples 4. Avocado 5. Asparagus 6. Sweet peas 7. Mangoes 8. Eggplant 9. Cantaloupe (Domestic) 10. Kiwi 11. Cabbage 12. Watermelon 13. Sweet potatoes 14. Grapefruit 15. Mushrooms