Healthy Food Choices: Organic Vegetables

Organic vegetables are an efficient way to decrease your exposure to harmful pesticides. Learn some tips for choosing the right organic foods for you in this video clip.

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Organic vegetables are pesticide free
Consider not eating the skin
Careful of spinach, celery, potatoes & lettuce

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Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALICE MERRRIT: Now I'm going to talk to you about organic vegetables. A lot of people are moving to buying organic vegetables in order to decrease their exposure to harmful pesticides. A lot of times washing produce can be helpful in decreasing the pesticide residue that sometimes a pesticide residue actually goes into the skin of the vegetable. So when considering buying organic vegetables think about thing that you actually eat the skin. So things like bell peppers would be a good example of something you might want to buy organic because you're actually going to eat the whole skin. Things that you can peel such as cucumbers or eggplants, those might not be as big of a deal to buy organic. There have been some studies that show the dirtiest or the highest vegetables in pesticide residue and some of those are things like bell peppers, celery, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes, so those to me are great things to look at buying organic. So remember, when you're thinking about buying organic vegetables, again, buy the ones that you're going to eat the skin and the ones that you're going to peel aren't necessarily as important to buy organic. Make sure you wash all of your produce very well and eat a variety of different produce, so that you're not exposed to any one pesticide in high doses. These are all really important things to think about when eating organic vegetables.

Healthy Food Choices: Organic Vegetables Video

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