Celebrating nature's bounty - food and pesticides - Editorial

Vegetarian Times, Nov, 1995 by Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin

Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to appreciate nature's abundance. But in past years, as I celebrated this bounty, I also felt uneasy about the agricultural chemicals that are used by conventional farmers. I knew that residues of all sorts of pesticides are on and in our food, but I also knew that there is no way to find out just what they do to our health. So for the most part, I turned a blind eye to the issue, hoping that what I couldn't see wouldn't hurt me.

All that changed a few years ago, after I read the National Research Council's 1993 report, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. The report highlighted just how little we know about the pesticides we ingest, and pointed out that children can be especially sensitive to agricultural poisons. Suddenly, I no longer enjoyed watching the juice dribble down my toddler's chin as she ate a conventionally grown peach. Every time I saw another study showing that illegal pesticide residues on imported produce routinely escape detection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or that even washed and peeled produce still contains agricultural poisons, I found it harder to bu conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. I started viewing organic produce as an investment in my family's health. When I became pregnant again, I thought about the developing child inside me and redoubled my efforts to eat organic foods whenever possible.

I can't produce any hard numbers to justify my conviction that it's harmful to eat pesticide residues. Agricultural workers-particularly in developing nations-are exposed to massive quantities of these chemicals and suffer acute poisoning. The rest of us are exposed to small doses of a multitude of pesticides over long periods of time. But even though the results of this type of exposure are impossible to determine, common sense tells me that it would be better to avoid them.

Still, I don't eat exclusively organic foods. Even though they've become more available in my area than they were a few years ago, they're much more expensive and their variety more limited. Instead, I have a strategy I'm comfortable with for now: I try to eat organic produce as much as possible, make even more of an effort for my 4-year-old and feed my 1-year-old organic foods exclusively. And I'm still open to changing my ways.

Many of you may be comfortable with your approach to pesticides. But for those of you who are, like me, still figuring things out, we have invited two people with opposite opinions on the pesticides issue to express their positions in "Pesticides: Pro and Con" (p. 68). We hope that hearing their arguments will help you decide what choices to make in the produce section.

This Thanksgiving, I'm looking forward to an all-organic feast. Happy holiday, and may you enjoy it in good health.