When my daughter visited home recently, we were grocery shopping and an acquaintance overheard our conversation in the produce aisle and asked, “You don’t buy organic?”  I responded, “only sometimes.”  But, rather than explaining in detail, I simply pulled out my phone and showed her the pesticide residue calculator so she could see how safe conventionally grown produce is.

The Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF) created the easy-to-use residue calculator on safefruitsandveggies.com based on an analysis by toxicologists with the University of California Personal Chemical Exposure Program.  Their analysis found that a child could literally eat hundreds to thousands of servings of a fruit or veggie in a day and still not have any health effects from residues. The analysis results were overwhelming so the AFF developed the calculator as a way to clearly illustrate how safe produce really is and how very minute residues are, if present at all.

The calculator features 20 of the most popular fruits and veggies and you can click on a man, woman, teenager or child to see the amount of servings one would have to consume in a day.  For example, a child could eat 181 servings or 1,448 strawberries in a day and still not have any effects from residues.  Peaches?  A child could eat 1,888 in a day.  Celery?  7,838 servings in a day.

The woman’s reaction to the residue calculator was one of amazement as we went through different produce items based on her favorites. As we talked a bit more, I shared that it’s important for consumers to know that both organic and conventional fruits and vegetables are safe and can be eaten with confidence since sometimes we only have a choice of one or the other.

As we left the store, my daughter laughed and said, “she obviously doesn’t know what you do for work.” No, and I’m happy to reassure one consumer or many consumers about the safety of all produce and the residue calculator makes that easy because it is science-based, created by experts and fun to use.

Try it today and let us know what you think.

Read, learn, choose but eat more fruits and veggies every day for better health and a longer life.

Teresa Thorne, AFF Executive Director