Removing Pesticide from Produce

By Daisy Luther

While I would love for every bite we consume to be organic, budgetary restrictions don’t always allow for it.  I do buy my produce from local farms and have a good relationship with a couple of favorite fellows in overalls, so I’m able to quiz them about what is sprayed on the goodies I bring home.  One important fact that most people don’t realize is the high price of becoming “certified organic” – it is literally tens of thousands of dollars.  This being the case, a lot of local produce is organic, just not certified organic.

So what can we do about those fruits and veggies that get sprayed?   Apples, for example, can have more than 48 different pesticides on them, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group.   You can clean off more than 95% of the pesticides if you are diligent in your process.  Because of chemtrails and spraying of nearby farms, even organic veggies can have some toxins.  I use this process for cleaning all of our food before consuming or preserving it.

I put  1 cup of baking soda and some all natural dish soap into a sink full of hot water.

I let the apples soak in the solution for about 20 minutes.  An alarming white film of gunk rose to the top of the sink.

I drained the sink, rinsed the apples and then  took a cloth and scrubbed the outside of the apples. After this, I was still able to see a film on them, which I’m assuming is not a naturally-occurring-to-apples kind of thing.  So I dried them with dish towels, cleaned out my sink with vinegar, and then repeated the whole process again.  This time there was far less white gunk in the sink after the apples soaked..

I drained the sink, rinsed the apples again and dried them with a good scrubbing using paper towels.  The apples were now gunk free.  This is time consuming, but I think well worth the time spent to remove as much of the chemical residue as possible.