ZOE Science & Nutrition - Recap: The top foods high in pesticides | Prof. Tim Spector

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Today we’re talking about pesticides. More specifically, about the surprising levels of pesticides found in some common foods. Professor Tim Spector is here to tell us how to avoid giving these to our families. Learn how your body responds to food with ZOE 👉 start here 📚 Books from our ZOE Scientists: - Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector - Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Mentioned in the episode: Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello, and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're talking about pesticides, and more specifically, about the surprising levels of pesticides found in some common foods. Professor Tim Spector is here to tell us how to avoid giving these to our families. Let's start by finding out which foods we should worry about. And spoiler, avocados are safe. But what isn't?

Breakfast cereals that contain oats. Okay, that's incredibly surprising. I thought you were going to give me a fruit. Tell me about oats. So oats, because they're often raised in damp countries they are sprayed just before they're harvested to dry them out okay and so this gives them masses amounts and because they're wet they absorb all all that glyphosate and so their levels are five to ten times more than many other grains.

So that is something that is not particularly a health food that I think people should go out of their way if they do love oats. And I know you used to be a big oat eater, although you're not anymore. You know, and you can afford it. Either switch to something else or go jump, particularly if you're trying to give your kids something which you think is healthy. I think that you could be giving them high levels of, particularly this herbicide, glyphosate.

Rice is another one that came up, interestingly, in some surveys as being quite high in pesticides. And we do know that if you get certain areas of India and Pakistan do a problem with runoff of arsenic into rice paddy fields. So, you know, if you're getting cheap rice from certain places, you may be ingesting a lot of chemicals. And in general, fruits and vegetables that contain a lot of water will tend to absorb these chemicals more than others, and where they particularly attract insects as well. So cucumbers, pears, nectarines, these tend to have quite high concentrations. And everyone loves strawberries. I love strawberries. But in tests in the US and the UK, they commonly get tested as being above the safety levels.

So we have these standard safety levels. And this is again for these herbicides you're talking about? This is pesticides and herbicides. So these are the insecticides and the herbicides, so the organophosphates and the glyphosates, really high levels. That's the sort of thing you should be wary of. If you have strawberries just once a year, it's probably not worth worrying about it. But if this is like part of your regular thing,

just see if you can get organic strawberries. Or presumably swap to a different fruit that has lower levels. Yes, and other berries. I didn't used to, but I now try and get organic blueberries if I can. You can often get them frozen, interestingly, and they're not very expensive if you buy the frozen organic berries and you stick them in the freezer. I was just thinking about this this morning. organic tinned food and a lot of organic frozen food because after podcasts that we've done in the past where i i've discovered that actually like frozen vegetables and um tinned vegetables are good we now cook a lot of that at home and what's interesting is that you know the the price

of still like organic tinned beans is still incredibly cheap so is that one of the areas that again you picked up on three really good tips for people is, yeah, organic frozen food is really good. They don't have the same costs because it obviously, it probably costs more to transport organic food because it does go off quicker. So you've got to be much faster. You can't just leave it around in warehouses for as long as possible. You know, we don't tend to store them in those chemical bags and things. So that's a good tip about frozen foods, canned foods. I think beans do come up in some surveys as being high in pesticides. So paying, you know, 10p extra or whatever for an organic bean can

is good value compared to the fresh one. It's all a bit scary. You're talking about like these pesticides and herbicides. What can I do if I've got this? Can I wash this? I was always brought up by my mother, interestingly, like I should wash the fruit. Washing helps, but it doesn't get it down to organic levels.

It doesn't get it down anywhere near to organic levels. So you remove a little bit of it, but often it, and you can peel them, that will remove some more. Particularly these, you know, that's probably one reason to peel cucumbers, which I never used to do by the way. I'm not, you know, too

lazy, but if you can't get an organic one, you know, probably peeling it you can't get nor getting one you know probably peeling it gets rid of perhaps half but you still um a lot of it might go beyond the skin so another little trick is if you washing stuff add some sodium bicarbonate baking soda that is very good at removing does that take a lot more of this away a lot better than just water so that's a little tip that doesn't cost anything. But there are certain fruits and vegetables that are actually pretty safe. Zoe's favorite fruit, the avocado, which we know is pretty generally healthy,

seems to absorb the herbicides and insecticides on the skin. So you don't eat the skin, so you're eating the flesh, and that's pretty free of any nasty problems. Similarly, an onion, you peel away, you don't eat the onion skin, so that's really well protected. And there are other examples like that, that are more the drier fruits and vegetables that don't absorb the water, that have got a skin. Mango is another one. They're actually pretty good because, again, you're not eating the skin. So there's a list of ones you don't have to worry about.

And there are lists. The U.S. has a list of these. Each year they do produce a list of the 15 best and the 15 worst offenders that people can look at, although each country is going to vary. And locally, you know, the amount of spraying and things will vary a lot. We know that certain parts of the UK, just like if you live in Norfolk, the spraying is enormous. So it's very hard to avoid some of that on most of the produce, whereas other bits of the country, the produce has much less. And I definitely have this vision that this is particularly bad in the States. Is this true?

Rules are much laxer in the States. They allow more organophosphate use, more chemicals that are banned in Europe. And I think there's generally much less checking of these levels. So the levels are generally higher in the US. And we've talked about antibiotic levels. They're also much higher still. And the general chemicals used in agriculture, it's still a bit the Wild West. So your differential to moving to organic is going to be even higher there then? It is, yes. And there are big differences between countries as well and the pricing as well. It's interesting, there are many countries in Europe where perhaps 25% of the produce is organic, places like Sweden, Austria, etc. In this country, we're probably below 3% in the UK. I think it's similarly low levels in the US, but luckily, it is really growing fast. So it is sort of doubling every 10 years. So I think it's a movement that's not going to go away. And I think it's something that everyone needs to know about. Well, Tim, you're definitely convincing me that I should be buying more organic food next week than I was last week. We asked this question right at the beginning, and I just want to get the clear answer to it. We said, you know, if there was one food that you were going to buy organically,

what would it be? And I'd love to get the answer. It would probably be tomatoes, actually, because I eat tomatoes nearly every day. And so I think, to me, that's more important. I was going to say strawberries, because I love strawberries, but I only have them every day. And so I think to me, that's more important. I was going to say strawberries because I love strawberries, but I only have them every day. So I'm less concerned about it. So I think that would be my main answer because you've got to think of that long-term exposure of foods and getting high-quality tomatoes. I've tasted Italian and Spanish ones, and not only do they taste better,

but if you can get the organic versions of those, they are pretty incredible. But again, you can get a can of organic tomatoes for not much more than the non-organic version. So it's about people thinking for themselves about what they would change, what do they have regularly, what could they improve that would make a much bigger difference to their long-term health.

So to recap, here's a few things that Tim suggests you can do today to improve your health. To avoid eating high levels of the herbicide glyphosate, switch to organic oats. Or like me, reduce your intake of oats altogether. When you're thinking about which foods are most beneficial to bio-organic, fruits and vegetables that absorb lots of water, cucumbers, pears and strawberries, for example, as these tend to have a higher concentration of pesticides and herbicides. And top tip, you can find organic frozen foods,

especially berries, much cheaper than their fresh counterparts. On to the safe side, avocados, mangoes, onions and most fruits and vegetables with a hard skin that we don't eat. They're on the safe list as most of the herbicides or pesticides they absorb are stored in their inedible skin. And finally, you have to make the choice about which food swaps will benefit your health the most because these will be the ones you stick to. For Tim, he tries to buy organic tomatoes as he eats them every day. If you want help making smarter food choices for your long-term health, then you might want to look into a Zoe membership. Zoe is your daily coach to better health for life.

Go to zoe.com slash podcast. Simply click the link in the episode description to get started today. Thank you to today's guest, Professor Tim Spector. See you next time.