Article: Eat Healthy on a Budget: Know The Clean 15

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Jul 20, 2016

Eat Healthy on a Budget: Know The Clean 15

Ideally we would be able to make it rain at the farmer's market and buy all organic, fresh produce. Unfortunately, most of us do not have that luxury and need some help trying to figure out how to eat healthy on a budget. Where there may be no easy answer, we have illustrated two handy guides for you to keep in your back pocket: The Dirty Dozen and The Clean 15. Keep these illustrated guides handy the next time you shop for healthy food for your fam.

* A small amount of sweet corn, papaya and summer squash sold in the United States is produced from GE seedstock. Buy organic varieties of these crops if you want to avoid GE produce.

1. The Clean 15 - usually okay to buy NOT organic.

The EWG analyzed pesticide residue for 50 popular fresh produce items and put together a list ranking the produce from the most to the least contaminated. These 15 foods came up as the least contaminated. Moral of the story– eating these 15 least contaminated foods when you can’t afford to buy organic can cut your pesticide exposure by a ton.

2. The Dirty Dozen - buy these organic!

The Dirty Dozen (featured here) might be the most important list you could memorize when it comes to eliminating harmful toxins from your diet. An organization called the Environmental Working Group developed this list of common produce items with the highest amounts of pesticides and other harmful chemicals. You can lower your pesticide exposure by 80% by switching these produce items to organic. These foods are worth splurging on, trust us!

Although highly processed foods and non-organic produce may save you money in the short-term, they will likely be the cause of health issues in the future. By opting for food sans chemicals or with a decreased amount of chemicals, you will keep your family healthy from the inside out. Now that we have given you our cheat sheets, we would love to hear from you. How do you do your best to shop healthy on a budget? Please leave any tips or tricks in the comments below.

SOURCES:

Environmental Working Group (2009) / Dr Axe

Written by Afterpay Payment

1 comment

This is the cutest illustration! What a great way to remember which fruits and veggies should be bought organic and those that don’t need to be. I am going to share it on my site this week, linking back and giving you full credit of course. Thank you for this post. Also, the eggplant is named kiwi but you can clearly tell it’s an eggplant :)

Michelle Elder

July 21, 2016 at 6:22 am