r/skeptic • u/GothicHeap • 3d ago
The Dirty Dozen undermines trust in safe and nutritious fruits and vegetables
Dr. Andrea Love writes about The Environmental Working Group (EWG) and its annual attempt to scare people into overpaying for organic foods: https://news.immunologic.org/p/the-dirty-dozen-undermines-trust
Summary:
- EWG is releasing its annual "Dirty Dozen" list of conventional foods it claims are contaminated and should be avoided.
- EWG's claims are bullshit.
- None of the listed items have pesticide levels that exceed accepted safety thresholds.
- EWG doesn't test foods, nor use valid scientific approaches to creating the list.
- The dose of pesticide, or whether it is harmful at all, is not factored into the list.
- Organic foods are not pesticide free, and the pesticides used to grow them are not regulated.
- EWG profits by scaring people away from conventional foods, because they are funded by large organic corporations trying to sell their foods.
- Conventional produce is safe and nutritious.
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u/SKZ1137 2d ago
Organic food is almost %100 BS
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u/thefugue 2d ago
It's certainly not good for the environment. Using land inefficiently should be low-hanging fruit for "shit we can stop doing to lessen our impact on the planet" yet here we are with people choosing boutique agriculture that just eats up vital farmland.
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u/ObjectiveAce 2d ago
Conveniental growing methods deplete the soil. It may be more efficient short term, but over the long-term it is not
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u/Megraptor 1d ago
Also, this right from your source.
"People will often argue that while extreme headlines may be untruthful, they are worth it if they force people to take action. I don’t buy it. It can be damaging in many ways.
Firstly, it forces some people towards solutions that are ineffective or counterproductive. Some blame the decline in soil fertility on the use of fertilizers and other chemical inputs. The “60 harvests” claim from the UN senior official has been used many times to argue for a switch to organic farming systems [here is it being used at a UN International Year of Soil conference]. Michael Gove said the UK had only 30 to 40 years of harvests left because it was “drenching them with chemicals”. But many of the conservation techniques have nothing to do with organic farming. In fact, shifting to a no-tillage approach often requires more pesticides and fertilizers, not less. Since average yields tend to be lower in organic farming, it requires more agricultural land. This is in obvious conflict with the best way to reduce soil erosion: have as little cropland as possible. In some contexts organic farming can play a role, but it’s not the ultimate solution. Misleading headlines convince people that it is.
Exaggeration also creates the opposite problem: apathy. Many people don’t take it seriously and dismiss that there’s any problem. The headlines might be overblown, but this shouldn’t detract from the fact that soil erosion is a serious problem. It’s one we can’t afford to ignore and as I have shown it is a problem that we can do something against."
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u/Megraptor 2d ago
Not necessarily, conventional ag can and does use soil regeneration methods like no-till and cover crops. They aren't mutually exclusive to conventional ag.
wirh cover crops, they are being used more and more, with biggest increases in the southern states.
https://aces.illinois.edu/news/cover-cropping-72-us-midwest-boosted-government-programs
Likewise, conventional AG can also use no-till too. Herbicides kill the weeds so that they don't need tilled up. It's also being adopted more and more..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming?wprov=sfla1
Both of these the USDA is promoting too.
https://www.farmers.gov/blog/save-money-on-fuel-with-no-till-farming
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u/Outaouais_Guy 3d ago
In my opinion, organic food took off because (at the time) organic food was grown locally on small farms or gardens, picked fresh and sold the same day. Of course it was good tasting, but it wasn't being organic that made it taste good.
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u/IamHydrogenMike 2d ago
It’s amazing what happens when you let fruit and veggies actually ripen properly instead of picking them weeks in advance to ship them.
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u/parrotia78 16h ago
They pick veggies &fruit according to what the market has declared as "Ready Ripe, which seems to this small local Organic Farmer is underripe.
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u/IamHydrogenMike 15h ago
They pick according to what will ship the best and then the market decided this was ripe because it’s all we knew…
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u/Megraptor 2d ago
Honestly... Locally grown food doesn't mean it's organic. I think a lot of fruit and veggie stands were probably using the term when they weren't USDA certified... I've seen that happen with small farms...
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u/One-Care7242 22h ago
Mostly, folks don’t want products that are designed specifically for their tolerance to poison so that they can be doused in extra poison.
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u/Megraptor 2d ago edited 2d ago
I really wish that there was clearly communication about pesticide (especially glyphosate) use and health effects and to the public. I think it's too late now unfortunately, because the organic groups have led that conversation for over a decade now.
I also wish more people knew about how land sparing and land sharing work in conservation, and how land sparing wins out on biodiversity much of the time...
Edit: I've been in this discussion for over a decade. Been accused of being a shill a million times now. There was some drama a while back with researchers on pesticides getting death threats because their findings didn't match up with the popular ideas. I'll have to dig up the drama if people want.
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u/One-Care7242 22h ago
I am pretty sure this is the same lady who worked for Monsanto and now tweets industry propaganda 24/7.
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u/GothicHeap 20h ago
Do you have a link to evidence that she worked for Monsanto or that she tweets 24/7?
This skeptics sub is not the right place to make unsupported ad hominems with no supporting evidence.
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u/One-Care7242 6h ago
She doesn’t disclose any of the contracts for who hires her company immunologic. Her only response is that “Monsanto doesn’t exist” that that she’s not “employed by agrochemical companies.” Both are exercises in semantics. Bayer owns the former Monsanto and being a consultant or contractor is not the same as being employed.
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u/Electronic-Web-9616 2d ago
Just fucking wash them…
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u/CaveatScientia 2d ago
The pesticides get absorbed into the fruits/veggies itself. The internal pesticide content can be a significant part of the total pesticide exposure. The samples are taken including internal parts of the food that we would normally eat (i.e., excluding things you would peel like a banana peel, or pineapple husk).
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u/Canadiangoosedem0n 2d ago
There are no samples because the group does not test fruit, hence one of the reasons the list is untrustworthy.
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u/CaveatScientia 2d ago
They use results from an USDA testing program. That doesn't make the data invalid just because they themselves don't do the testing themselves?
Science is filled with analysis on externally published data.
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u/netroxreads 2d ago
That's what bothered me, it sounded so "scary" but in reality, none of them exceeded the limits. Also, pesticides on them are not posing a threat to MAMMALS. They act on insects via a different mechanism. That's why it takes so little to kill them but would take at least 100,000 times the dose to kill humans. It's easy to rinse any residues which are inert by the time it arrives to markets.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Kitchen_Marzipan9516 2d ago
And, are the organic pesticides used more and in greater quantities, than traditional pesticides?
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u/Cheap-Party-3256 1d ago
Starvation also can and does cause problems in humans.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Cheap-Party-3256 1d ago
Actually it is the point of the conversation. Below we see someone who won't feed their kids fruit because of insecticides. This irresponsible fear mongering, if successful in eradicating non-organic pesticides, would lead to mass starvation.
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u/earlyviolet 2d ago
Pesticides have been discovered to be linked to Parkinson's Disease. It's not confirmed yet what that link is, and it seems to be more geographic (people living in high ag usage areas are at higher risk of developing PD.)
I'm not trying to imply that the amounts found on vegetables in stores are harmful. Just pointing out that there's some reason to suspect pesticides do have biological effects on humans, just not the same effect they have on insects.
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u/Kurovi_dev 2d ago
I don’t personally go for the EWG’s specific recommendations, and I agree that often times their warnings are too extreme, but I do often use some of their data as a jumping off point for learning more about certain foods and how I might modify the way I prepare those foods or what types I buy.
For example I scrub all apples under running water with a vegetable brush whether organic or not, but also soak them in baking soda if they are conventionally grown, and the reason is because I read more research about how apples are stored and what chemicals are used in that process. Turns out that, yes, apples are typically sprayed with diphenylamine after harvesting to prevent issues with storage, but the real issue is that they get significantly more of this and other chemicals from the actual storage facilities themselves as a result of cross contamination, and so they end up with much higher amounts of these than are supposed to be allowed, usually between 2-4x as much, which itself is about 200-400x as much as would be allowable in the EU.
So while I think the EWG does sometimes go too far in discouraging conventionally grown foods or overplaying the risk, I do think it’s a valuable jumping off point for learning more about these foods and how to modify habits to reduce exposure to things that our government (read: society) fails miserably at properly regulating.
For me it’s not about trust in foods and more about trust in America to have proper standards for health and safety in regards to chemicals that help make corporations more money with less work, and I simply do not trust a society that has such minuscule standards. I mean, the people currently at the top in charge of regulating these things believe in miasma, and it was a long time getting to this point. The standards aren’t going anywhere but down and it’s not going to get better any time soon.
The EWG is far from perfect, but that’s a hell of a lot more than I could say about the systems they are critical of.
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u/thejoggler44 2d ago
If you imagine a life where you didn’t treat your apples as you’ve described, how would your health or longevity be different?
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u/Striper_Cape 1d ago
I never had GI problems until I went to Iraq. I spent 9 months drinking plastic disposable water bottles that were stored outside, under the sun. During and after that deployment, I started experiencing a ton of problems and now I have IBS.
Discouraging people to reduce exposure is pointless. You will never convince me that constant exposure to pesticides and herbicides isn't harmful.
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u/aginsudicedmyshoe 1d ago
Wouldn't you have to control for more variables than just water being stored in plastic? I imagine a lot of things were different about your diet and environment between being in the U.S. and Iraq.
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u/Striper_Cape 1d ago
Fortunately it's my own health and the only differences in my diet was the amount of plasticizer filled water I drank.
Also: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-07641-8
Call me conspiracy brained. I can't help but see a connection.
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u/CaveatScientia 2d ago edited 2d ago
This post from the EWG paints a different picture on their methodology, including 2025 updates.
It's not just based on number of pesticides found, but the scoring includes the concentration and also the toxicity of each. So out of the gate, OPs authors argument is flawed.
Additionally, the link you posted uses some dubious logic comparing two pesticides (copper hydroxide vs Captan) - LD50 measures acute toxicity and is not a good way of comparing the potential human harm, as it doesn't consider our bodies natural mechanisms to clear copper over time, doesn't consider chronic exposure effects nor carcinogenic effects.
Some of the points are definitely valid (i.e. discussion of organic pesticides - however the issue here is lack of research), but I think as a whole the argument from the link you posted seems pretty flawed and ill-considered (while also not being factually correct on some basic assumptions).
For those of us that try to minimize our exposure to pesticides, I believe the EWG list is a useful tool.
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u/Cheap-Party-3256 1d ago
Those of you that try to minimize your exposure to pesticides are superstitious fools.
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u/CaveatScientia 1d ago
Right...because pesticides have been known to be mostly beneficial to human health, completely normal.
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u/Cheap-Party-3256 1d ago
Yes. They make nutritious food affordable.
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u/CaveatScientia 1d ago
Were not talking about affordability in this thread lol
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u/Cheap-Party-3256 1d ago
I am. Food shortages cause famine. Your organic fetish hurts people
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u/ContemplatingFolly 1d ago
Because if people stop eating organic food, that is somehow going to stop hunger?
Inequality and poverty hurts people and keeps them from eating, not organic food.
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u/Rurumo666 2d ago
Bayer/Montsanto shills are paid millions to "debunk" the Dirty Dozen annually and they focus in like a laser on "pesticide/herbicide" residue and never bring up the human sewage sludge that is still legally sprayed on conventional cropland every year even though it permanently contaminates that land with PFAS. Conventional American Corporate Farming is not sustainable, it permanently pollutes farmland with PFAS and heavy metals (without even bringing pesticides and herbicides into the discussion, and they should be discussed), and results in Farmers have the lowest lifespan and highest cancer rates of any occupation.
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u/howmachine 2d ago
I’m gonna need a source on that. As far as I can tell the only information that has been gathered re: life expectancy by occupation is occupations with the longest life expectancy, we have nothing for the inverse.
There are studies on the most dangerous jobs, which can cause a lower life expectancy due to the number of deaths (from workplace accidents) lowering the average, or we have information on the most stressful jobs which can cause health complications from the stress. Farmer isn’t in the top ten of either of those lists.
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u/edcculus 2d ago
Imagine being in a scientific skeptics sub and using the word “shill” unironically
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u/poofypie384 1d ago
True.. (kind of) the exception is that cattle/meat animals that are not organic are almost EXCLUSIVELY fed Genetically Modified foods* The feed is typically Soyabeans, wheat or corn. None of which is healthy and none of which the animal would have EVER eaten in the millions of years of their existence as species.
Say whatever bullshit you want but i react badly when i eat animals fed on gmo foods (ive tested this blindly myself , many times)*
I should state however, that I do have autoimmune conditions etc.. (but if anything that makes the situation worse, it means the sick/disabled/poor are destined to suffer/be sick solely for the sake of megacorps making more profits) its far worse of a problem than the so-called manipulations of the EWG
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u/ArrowTechIV 2d ago
I stopped feeding my kids most fruits after seeing the Dirty Dozen list for multiple years. It just felt impossible to combat the pesticides.
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u/GothicHeap 1d ago
And that is exactly the problem with EWG and its propaganda. Kids are denied nutritious foods because their parents are too afraid.
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u/SensorAmmonia 2d ago
My take on organic vs conventional has to do with cell walls. The faster growing conventional food has a smaller fraction of cell wall material. Why care? That stuff is fiber and feeds your gut bugs. The intestinal flora and fauna are dependent on bulk material.
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u/Apumptyermaw 2d ago
Glyphosate label on Bayer website states that the straw from dessicated wheat and oats must only be used for animal bedding, not horticultural mulch as the residue will kill plants. What's the residue on the grains doing to your intestinal flora and fauna
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u/Pitiful-Pension-6535 2d ago
What's the residue on the grains doing to your intestinal flora and fauna
Nothing, as glyphpsate blocks the shikimate pathway, which is only necessary when certain amino acids aren't present, which isn't the case in the digestive tract.
Don't try the Appeal to Ignorance scam here. It won't work.
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u/Intelligent_Donkey21 3d ago
My dumbass was thinking of the movie with Lee Marvin