Does anyone else wonder about the pesticides and stuff in vegetables or is it just me? 1 March 2021 at 9:44PM in Health & beauty MoneySaving 4 replies 141 views

away-with-the-fairies

Am not sure where to post this  so apologies. A few months ago I decided to take the step to veganism more for health reasons than anything really. As part of this journey I now have an allotment to grow some of the veg I eat and I had never really given a thought before it was mentioned to me concerning the number of potentially   ‘Bad’ chemicals that most of our veg is sprayed with. There’s me thinking I was taking the healthy route and I am probably just consuming more chemicals. Lol. I blame Covid for the up and down of my mental health lately worrying about every little thing that’s mainly out of my control. But is it just me that thinks over and over about this.? Obviously if I had more money all my fruit and veg would be organic but the way things are I can’t justify even buying a couple of organic things.. there my thoughts are down but would love to hear others viewpoints. 

Floss

The chemicals you regard as 'bad' have mostly been proved to be safe and the real nasties have all been banned. Also bear in mind that growing organic needs a lot of time & prep to ensure the soil is cleaned of years of use of all chemicals.

Having an allotment is amazing - you will be eating fruit & veg that tastes so much tastier because it is so fresh & so local to your plate.

rach_k

Toxins accumulate as you go up the food chain, so even if you ate only meat you'd still be eating animals that had eaten toxins and would therefore be eating them yourself.  Think about mercury, which contaminates water and is taken up by plants, which smaller fish eat. They get eaten by bigger fish like tuna who live for longer and eat loads of the smaller fish, then by the time a human comes along, the mercury is a potential problem.  If farmers are using pesticides you'd consider harmful (although as Floss says, they're mostly safe for humans), even if you only ate animals, those animals would have eaten plants with the pesticides on them so you'd still be consuming them.

You really can't avoid it so I wouldn't waste my energy worrying about it.  

littlegreenparrot

I consider this to be a bit of a minefield. There are all sorts of things you could worry about, even if you did buy organic for example would it be locally grown? Is it in season? 
I choose to use a local veg box company, support local business and wash the veg. 

Washing will remove most residue. If you want to find out more look up the dirty dozen and the clean fifteen. These are respectively those fruit and veg that use the most, and the least pesticides during the growing. Honestly though I would pick my battles. 

Mrs_Z

Yes I think of this at times (and I'm not a vegetarian nor vegan) but I don't see what I can do about it.  I also have an allotment and you will find out that growing your own produce is rather hard work.  I could never grow a kg of carrots for £0.60.  In fact, I don't even bother with most veg as it's a losing battle.  I won't use any slug pellets or chemicals on my allotment, and hand weed all produce.  I pick my battles, I just grow stuff that has a reasonable chance of success or what makes me happy, which means mostly flowers in my case!   Still, I love the challenge!