Most of our children have done this experiment in school — the experiment where a seed or a plant is placed in water and they observe the roots growing. Elise, an elementary school student tried to sprout three different types of sweet potatoes in her experiment — a non-organic sweet potato, a store-bought organic sweet potato, and a local organic sweet potato. Take a look at what happened:
Those little stickers you find on your fruits and vegetables, as annoying as they are, have a lot of meaning behind them. If you take a close look at them, you will notice each sticker contains a 4-5 digit numeric code called a Price Lookup (PLU) Code.
Pesticides and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are the two big reasons why most people try to buy organic produce when they can. Luckily, as demand for organics grows, so does the selection at the grocery store. This increasing popularity is a great thing, but often times, stores don't always have what we need when we need it, the produce is not always fresh, or the food is not local because it was shipped from the other side of the world. So what other options do we have? Organic produce delivery and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) may be a good fit for your family.
For the past nine years, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released an annual Dirty Dozen/Clean 15 list designed to be used as a shopping guide, so you know which fruits and vegetables contain the most pesticide residue. Pesticides are not only harmful to us, they are also harmful to the environment.
