Detoxify Your Life – Start at the Grocery Store Each time I go grocery shopping I can’t help but look at what other people have in their shopping carts. 90% of the time I am disappointed with what I see and I wish that there was a polite and unobtrusive way to share my knowledge with people about what they are buying. I don’t blame the consumers; I blame the manufacturers and marketers of a lot of our food. As I stroll through the aisles of my local supermarket I am sorely reminded about how the processed foods and foods sprayed with chemicals, or made from GMOs, are making people sick with a wide array of serious illnesses. The reality of all of this can seem overwhelmingly hopeless, but the good news is that it’s not! We can take control over much of what we are exposed to when we know what to avoid and what to use instead.
Some Quick and Simple Tips When at the Grocery Store:
When buying produce, make sure that if the fruits and vegetables that you are buying are listed on the top 12 of the "Dirty Dozen" list, that you buy them organic Every year the Environmental Working Group puts out a list of the top 12 produce items to avoid due to the high amounts of pesticides being used on them, as well as a list of produce with the least amount of pesticides used. Below is the list for 2016. Remember, you can't wash or cook off pesticides and these toxins get into the cells of the fruit and vegetables that they are sprayed on. The items that contain the highest amount of pesticides are:- strawberries
- apples
- nectarines
- peaches
- celery
- grapes
- cherries
- spinach
- tomatoes
- sweet bell peppers
- cherry tomatoes
- cucumbers
- avocados
- sweet corn (over 80% of corn is genetically modified, so you still want to buy this organic)
- pineapples
- cabbage
- sweet peas frozen
- onions
- asparagus
- mangoes
- papayas
- kiwi
- eggplant
- honeydew melon