Food & Nutrition What Are the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen Foods? Every year the Environmental Working Group evaluates data on the levels of pesticide residue on popular produce. Here's the lowdown on this year's report. By Macaela Mackenzie Macaela Mackenzie Instagram Twitter Website Macaela MacKenzie (she/her) is a freelance journalist and author covering women's equality in sports and culture. She is currently working on her first book on equal pay in sports and how women athletes are closing the gender gap. As a former senior editor of Glamour, she oversaw all health and wellness content, covering mental health and self-care, race and gender gaps in medicine, the fertility spectrum, and women's sexual wellness, and wrote four cover stories on Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Billie Jean King, and Simone Biles. Prior to her role at Glamour, Macaela was a freelance journalist with more than 2,000 bylines covering women's wellness for outlets including SELF, Women's Health, Forbes, SHAPE, Marie Claire, Elle, and Allure, among others. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with degrees in journalism, sociology, and psychology. She currently lives in New York. Shape's editorial guidelines and Renee Cherry Renee Cherry Instagram Twitter Renee Cherry is a New York-based associate editor at Shape who covers beauty, celebrity news, food trends, fitness, and more. While studying magazine journalism at Syracuse University, she completed an internship at Cosmopolitan, getting her first glimpse at the media industry. After graduating, she joined Shape as an intern, eventually becoming a digital writer/producer before taking on her current role. Shape's editorial guidelines Updated on March 18, 2021 Share Tweet Pin Email We independently research, test, review, and recommend the best products—learn more about our process. If you buy something through our links, we may earn a commission. Grocery shopping can come with a weekly dilemma. Should you pick up organic foods or go with whatever produce is cheapest and most convenient? It's a healthy nosh either way, so how bad can it really be, right? If you're someone who aims to go organic when it really makes a difference — and conventional when it doesn't — you can use the Environmental Working Group's latest report to guide your purchases. EWG, a nonprofit that specializes in research and education pertaining to human health and the environment, just announced its 2021 Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen guides, which are meant to inform shoppers on the types of produce that tend to have the greatest and least amounts of pesticide residue. ( 3-Ingredient, Easy Smoothie Recipes for Fast Mornings Each year, EWG analyzes data from food safety tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA only tests a handful of types of crops each year, and the EWG shopping guidesuse the most recent data available for each of 46 popular fruits and vegetables. Before testing samples, USDA testers prep foods in the same ways that people would normally do at home, such as rinsing off apples or removing a banana peel. In its most recent guide, EWG reported that nearly 70 percent of conventionally grown fruits and veggies sold in the U.S. are contaminated with pesticide residues. Getty Images As for the produce with the highest amount of pesticide residue, according to EWG's 2021 Dirty Dozen list? Strawberries and spinach — both of which topped last year's list as well. This year EWG noted that over 90 percent of samples of strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines, and leafy greens tested positive for two or more types of pesticides. Additional types of produce on this year's Dirty Dozen list include grapes, cherries, peaches, pears, bell and hot peppers, celery, and tomatoes. In other words, these are the types of produce that you might want to (read: probably should) buy organic, as organic fruits and veggies are grown with fewer, if any, synthetic pesticides. ( The #1 Trick to See If You Should Buy Organic Produce Now, here's a good question: If these fruits and veggies are so contaminated, how are they making it onto your plates? The use of various pesticides is currently approved by the USDA for conventional growers, as pesticides do in fact keep pests off crops. That being said, some experts argue that pesticide residue might have harmful effects on those who consume conventional produce, while others say they're safe in the amounts consumed when eating produce. TL;DR — pesticides overall are a hotly debated topic and, according to the EWG, in "need of reform." On the flip side, EWG also released its annual Clean Fifteen list, which details the foods that proved to have the lowest amount of pesticide residue. As was the case last year, avocados topped the list.They were followed by sweet corn, pineapple, onions, papaya, frozen sweet peas, eggplant, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, kiwi, cauliflower, mushrooms, honeydew, and, last but not least, cantaloupes. ( Meet the Urban Farmer Bringing Organic Produce to the Nation's Capital If you're only buying organic produce part of the time, you can use the latest Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists to inform your choices. But more importantly, don't let the list put you into a full-on panic to the point where you're avoiding the produce section altogether, says Elizabeth Shaw, M.S. R.D.M., C.P.T., a certified nutritionist and co-author of Instant Pot Cookbook for Dummies. "The best way to ensure produce safety is to practice properly cleaning your fruits and vegetables," she says. Using water, gently scrub your fruits and veggies when you get home from the grocery store. "If you do this, you are proactively helping to ensure you are eating the safest produce possible, organic or not," says Shaw. Shaw stresses the important thing to remember is to eat your veggies your fruits and veggies — regardless of which list they fall on. "If you prefer organic, that's great, go for it," she says. "But, if you're like me and choose whichever is on sale that week, rest assured, you are still doing your body and lifelong health good by eating more produce." Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! 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