Keep An Eye On What You Eat!

Pesticides, chemicals, and fake dyes: these are three of the many things that people today put into their bodies without knowing it. Have you ever wondered what really is in your food? At the grocery store, apples, oranges, and other fruits look bright and are full of attractive colors. In nature, apples are not usually fire-engine red and oranges are not perfectly orange. So, why do they appear like this in the grocery store? There is only one answer, and that is because before they are shipped to your local Stop&Shop, producers spray the fruits and vegetables with chemicals to repel bugs, but these harsh pesticides are terrible for your body. In some cases, the pesticide is sprayed while the crop is growing, but it is mostly applied after the fruit or vegetable is harvested so it will remain “fresh” and bug-free. Over a long period of time, ingesting these chemicals could cause serious health problems. A few of the many diseases that have been linked to these chemicals are cancers and Parkinson’s disease. If you can not pronounce the name of one of the ingredients, it would most likely been in your best interest not to eat it!

As shown in the picture above, washing fruit and vegetables before eating them is key to keeping bad chemicals out of your digestive system. Also, companies are beginning to sell fruit and vegetable spray washes, which hopefully remove these pesticides from the skin of the fruit. In the worst case, these chemicals could seep through the skin of the fruit, such as a strawberry or blueberry, and contaminate the inside. This is where buying completely organic fruits and vegetables would come into the best interest of the consumer. Many companies who realize the concern about pesticides have found ways to keeps bugs and animals away but still refrain from soaking the produce in harsh chemicals. Another way to keep from digesting these chemicals is to peel the outer layer of the fruit or vegetable off, this may also be removing the pesticides. Many people do not realize how dangerous these sprays are, because normally, this topic is not prominent. Reading stories about how chemicals on fruit have affected the brain and body of people is very sad and scary. So, I think that keeping an eye out for the brands of fruit that you buy is a good idea, and later in life, you will be able to maintain a healthier body without the extra worry. As the saying goes, “You are what you eat” and in this case, you definitely do not want to be what you eat.

~Micaela Estrada