The UFC Que Choisir, which studied nearly 14,000 product samples, has just revealed which foods contain the most pesticides. While fruits and vegetables are the most impacted, their ranking includes basic consumer products such as flour and coffee.
The UFC Que Choisir has just screened nearly 14,000 health checks on products for sale from organic and conventional agriculture, in order to study the level of pesticides that can cause cancer in our food. The finding is alarming since 150 substances suspected of being carcinogenic, toxic for reproduction and DNA or even endocrine disruptors were detected in the analyses! “For fruits and vegetables from intensive agriculture, the presence of one of these risky pesticides is revealed in more than half (51%) of the checks and of at least two risky pesticides for 30% of the checks. Far from only concerning infinitesimal, non-quantifiable traces, in nearly one out of two cases (43%), the authorities were able to measure the doses of these substances”we read in the association’s press release of consumers published on March 24.
Pesticides and food: organic farming largely spared
If intensive agriculture is to be feared, organic is less affected by contamination because pesticides are prohibited in this mode of production. “There are practically six times fewer samples of organic tomatoes contaminated with risky pesticides (1 sample out of 10 in organic compared to almost 6 out of 10 in conventional), seven times fewer for organic green beans and eight times fewer for apples “specifies the association, which contacted ANSES to request, among other things, more transparency in these procedures and the ban “immediate marketing and use of the molecules most at risk”.
Pesticides and food: worrying substances detected
Among the substances discovered in the samples of fruits and vegetables singled out by the UFC Que Choisir, we find: pyriproxyfen, “suspected of being a endocrine disruptor “ which, as the association reminds us, would be responsible for malformations of the head and brain observed in Brazil and was found in 1 quarter of the grapefruits analyzed; fludioxonil, a fungicide suspected of being an endocrine disruptor, detected in 48% of samples including 80% of apples. There is also phosmet (47% of the samples), an insecticide suspected by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of being toxic for the reproductive function. Pesticides have also been detected in other consumer products such as wine (50%), teas and infusionscoffee and cocoa (87.2%), wheat flour (65.6%) and aromatic herbs (54%).
The least toxic foods remain those with the lowest frequency rate of contamination by a risky residue, such as asparagus (2.5%), kiwi (2.8%), broccoli (8. 7%), cassava (3.4%), walnuts (4.4%) and Jerusalem artichoke (9.1%).
Pesticides and agriculture: nothing new on our plates…
A study conducted in 2019 by the association Future generations revealed the presence of pesticide residues in 71.9% of the fruits with 2.9% exceeding the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL). For vegetables, the average was 41.3% of the samples and 3.4% of MRLs exceeded. In its ranking, the association also placed cherries in first place, with pesticide residues found in 89% of the samples! Next came clementines and mandarins (88.1%), grapes (87.3%), grapefruit (86.3%), peaches and nectarines (83%), strawberries (82.9%) and oranges (81.2%) followed by apricots (80.4%) and apples (80.3%).