Pesticides on Our Plates: Is Our Food Safe to Eat?

cheryl

cheryl

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Pesticides on Our Plates: Is Our Food Safe to Eat? - Scientific American

A new report looks at the amount of pesticides that are making their way to our plates

The FDA recently released its annual Pesticide Residue Report. As pesticides are one of the things people worry most about, I thought we should take a look at what they found. Here to help us make sense of this very technical and complex data is Dr. Carl Winter of the UC Davis. Dr. Winter is a toxicologist who researches the detection of pesticides and naturally-occurring toxins in foods and how to assess their risks. Below are highlights from our conversation. Please click on the audio player to hear the entire interview.

Nutrition Diva: As part of their ongoing pesticide monitoring program, FDA tested 7,000 foods for residues of over 700 different pesticides and selected industrial compounds. Over half of all the samples analyzed contained no pesticide chemical residues at all. 94% of samples were compliant with federal standards. That means that 6% of the samples were NOT compliant. Does that mean that they were unsafe?
 
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