When Fear Wins: Fallout From the “Dirty Dozen” List
October 12, 2010 in Food, Other Politics
Experts in Nutrition and Public Health agree that a healthy diet should include lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. These foods have multiple health benefits because they provide dietary fiber, trace minerals, vitamins, anti-oxidants, and a wide variety of compounds that enhance vein health, reduce cancer risk, and bind dangerous toxins (just to name a few). It is also widely recognized that Americans, on the whole, eat far less fresh produce than would be ideal. In fact, we would need 13 million more acres of fruit and vegetable production in the US to even meet the RDA (the amount recommended by the USDA) So the last thing we need is anything that discourages people from consuming these healthy foods. Unfortunately, there is an organization called the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that has been quite “successful at getting consumers to avoid eating more fresh produce.
The Anatomy of a Fear Campaign
The EWG discourages people from buying fresh produce by scaring them about “pesticide residues” that might be on those crops. Each year this group publishes a “Dirty Dozen” list which purports to tell which particular fruits and vegetables have the most pesticide residues and which should be avoided from their point of view. As we will see in a moment, their ‘analysis’ has no scientific basis. But as if often the case, facts and reason can do little to diminish the persuasive power of fear.
Fear Works
A recent consumer poll by the highly reputable Hartman group reveals that the “Dirty Dozen List” and related efforts have been quite effective at convincing significant numbers of people to limit their purchases of fresh produce. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of US consumers reporting that they don’t buy more produce because of pesticide concerns is up from 18% to 29%. That is an increase of 3.1 million people in two years who are limiting their produce consumption. That means that there are now over 55 million Americans whose diet is influenced by this fear. If you believe the experts on nutrition and public health, what the EWG has managed to do is to exacerbate a public health “time bomb” for the future. ”Fear” is winning, and more people are limiting the enjoyment and health potential that could come from eating more fresh produce.
The Irony
What is particularly ironic about this situation is that the USDA document that the EWG uses each year to make its “Dirty Dozen” list actually documents the exact opposite of what EWG claims. The USDA collects thousands of samples of fresh produce from stores around the country and analyzes them for pesticide residues. What the data shows is that with extremely rare exceptions, the residues are well below the very conservative safety thresholds that have been set through careful risk analysis by the EPA. Similar surveys from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation show the same thing. A rational, scientific take from the data is that fresh produce is extremely safe to eat from a pesticide residue point of view. To say otherwise, the EWG simply ignores decades of advances in the understanding of toxicology to fall-back to a, “you just don’t know what effects these residues might have…” point of view.
An organization representing farmers commissioned a critique of the “methodology” behind the Dirty Dozen list by qualified toxicologists and nutritionists. The EWG actually tried to rally support in the Organic industry to block the funding for that effort. Fortunately, many key organizations within the “Organic” community were unwilling to throw their support behind this effort to suppress criticism of the EWG analysis.
EWG Has Lots of Help Promoting This Fear
It is far easier to scare people than it is to inform them, and the EWG is winning here because they have a lot of help. Much of the Press, and the vast number of self-declared “experts” on healthy eating, take what should be an obscure and discredited document (The Dirty Dozen List…) and uncritically disseminate its misleading and destructive message. It fits the “pesticides are bad” preconception that is so widespread in a society where only a tiny proportion of the population grows all the food for the rest – a tiny proportion that understands that pests are real and that pesticides have gotten far safer than the 50+ year-old image of them that most people imagine.
What EWG says (aided by their many willing mouthpieces) fits the erroneous belief that most people have that there is an alternative to pesticides called “Organic.” In fact, Organic growers also use pesticides, and they are not all as safe as the ones used by conventional growers. Actually a large proportion of today’s pesticides are less toxic to mammals than table salt. But there I go, trying to bring reason and real information into the mix.
What EWG and most of their supporting voices advocate is that consumers should buy the Organic options, particularly for the crops on the “List.” Of course the Organic options come at a price premium. Just avoiding produce becomes an easier decision for the unnecessarily alarmed consumer without a lot of extra disposable income.
So fear wins. Fewer Americans eat a healthy diet. The EWG, those who support them, and those who repeat their distortions, all bear the responsibility for this trend.
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Image of Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting, ”The Scream” from oddsock.
When Fear Wins: Fallout From the “Dirty Dozen” List – Red, Green, and Blue.
