The OG food scanning "app"

There will be another post about the how the EWG evaluates the safety of face and body products.

This post is about the EWG’s contribution to helping us eat clean foods. They were doing this way before the food scanning apps. Funny story about a food scanning app…

I am on a group video call with some friends. We meet online weekly to discuss health. One of our goals is to stay hydrated. One friend tells us that he is using the food scanning app and scanned a box of tea which got a high score. He said even though he does not like tea, he has been enjoying this apple cinnamon flavor. My next question is who makes it… it’s a popular brand that is in every American grocery store. Uh oh… he travels a lot but fortunately he is home on this day so I ask him to go get the tea box to read the ingredients. There is no apple in the apple cinnamon tea. It has apple flavor. The product scored high with the food scanning app because it has no salt, sugar, cholesterol, or other common pitfalls from the American diet. Moral of the story, technology still requires human input for best results. 

Back to the EWG, they release a food related annual report called the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen every year. For a small donation they will mail you a wallet sized printout to use when shopping. The Clean 15 shows the cleanest produce, fruits and veggies that tested low for pesticides. You can eat this produce in its conventional form and skip the organic versions pretty safely. This list is usually fruits and veggies with hard skin that does not get eaten like oranges, avocados, etc.

Get the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15 FREE Here

The Dirty Dozen is the opposite! These crops are so dirty that when the organic is too expensive, I don’t buy that item at all because the conventional is toxic. Berries have been on the list every time I have looked: strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, etc. Their skins are so thin that they absorb all the chemical pesticides and then you eat it.

The EWG is a non-profit committed to contributing to clean water, food, and skin care in an ever increasingly toxic America. Their resources are free and they accept donations to help continue the important work that they do. Check the out at EWG.org to get ideas on keeping your family safe from chemicals and pollutants.