With ‘organic’ being very on trend at the moment and many people being mislead about what organic actually means, I thought it was time to clear up some confusion. Unfortunately, in Australia there is no regulation around the word ‘organic’, meaning that anyone growing produce or making a product can claim organic as long as they are using natural methods or using at least one natural ingredient. This can be very misleading if you are in a supermarket and unaware of these regulations, as almost every second product on the shelves is now claiming to be ‘organic’.

The only way to know if something is certified organic is to look for the ‘Australian Certified Organic’ stamp somewhere on the labelling. The same rule applies to fruit and vegetables. The fruit and vegetables we purchase from the big chain supermarkets are possibly the furthest thing from ‘organic’. They are sprayed with harmful chemicals to make them last longer, grow larger than normal and also to hold their colour and shape better, to make them more appealing to the consumers. This becomes very obvious once you shop at a farmers market or local grocer who gets their produce from a local farmer, and the shapes, colours and sizes of all the fruits and vegetables is noticeably different (smaller in size, colour shift and needs to be eaten within a few days) to what you usually see in supermarkets.

Although there is so much hype around buying organic produce, many people cannot afford to buy it all the time, whether it is not available to them or not affordable, but the truth is, you don’t have to buy ALL ORGANIC produce to reduce your risk for chemical contamination. The Environment Working Group (EWG) releases lists every year of the most and least contaminated produce to help consumers make informed choices. A total of about 50 fruits and vegetables are tested and ranked by the total number of pesticides detected on the crop and the percentage of samples tested with detectable pesticides.

Use the following lists when shopping to help make the best informed choices for you and your family, even if you cant buy entirely organic foods, these lists will help clarify which foods are more important and worth spending the money on.

I hope that this list can help you when food shopping in the future, and remember, it does get updated every year. This is the 2018 most recent version of the list. Although everything with the word ‘organic’ often comes with a hefty price tag, I encourage you to shop outside of the large chain supermarkets and look into local markets, farmers markets or local grocer and butcher stores because I can guarantee you there produce will taste 100x better and be much more affordable. I know it is not the most convenient thing to have to go to a market to purchase fruit and vegetables, then a butcher to purchase your meats and then to the supermarket for the other miscellaneous items but it is so worth it in the long run. If you really can’t get yourself to a market, of course buying supermarket fruit and vegetables is much better than not eating any at all, just make sure you rinse everything thoroughly with water before consuming.

Hopefully you have found this useful and you can use these lists to help you make educated decisions about fruit and vegetables in the future.

Happy shopping 🙂