I had seen an article on foods that are more often contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals and wrote a blog post on it (“Protect your kids, buy organic”) on May 21st. Now I’ve got a follow-up to that post. To begin with, as I briefly alluded to in the May post, there’s an Environmental Working Group (EWG) that makes recommendations to the public on a number of health-related issues. It’s a 501(c)3 non-profit that was originally formed in 1993 and includes people from a variety of disciplines (e.g., scientists, engineers, lawyers). It also, since 2002, advocates Congress on health-protection and subsidy-shifting policies and publishes a variety of reports through its website www.ewg.org. I just signed up for several of its newsletters and read a study that may lead to my changing which cellphone I use.

“Prevention” magazine, in its August 2010 edition just published an article reviewing the recent version of the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. I usually don’t read this publication, but my spouse has a subscription and said I’d be interested in this particular article. When I originally found those lists in May, I clipped them from a newspaper, researched the background of the EWG, then made multiple copies of the lists and we started buying more organic foods than we had previously. Subsequently our 26-week Grant Family Farms (local CSA) Veggie Couples Share began and, as of yesterday, our 22-week Fruit Share began. But we’re still buying some produce that doesn’t come from our CSA. So I read the article in my wife’s copy of “Prevention” with interest.

The writer went through the lists fruit and vegetable by fruit and vegetable and gave a cogent rationale for why each was on each list. For instance, take celery, which ranked number one on the Dirty Dozen list. When I first read that I wasn’t at all sure why celery would be in the “These you really should buy in the Organic foods section.” But the comment in the article made sense. Three quarters of our celery crop is grown in the fall and winter when weather conditions make contamination by bacteria and fungi more likely to occur. That added to the fact that we consume all of the celery stalk (I do cut of those leafy bits and the large end of the stalk), leads to repetitive spraying of the crop with pesticides. So buying organic celery now does make logical sense to me.

Try the EWG website and see if their work interests you as much as it does me.

On one of my previous posts I mentioned Marion Nestle as a professor of nutrition who had commented on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines. I read two of her columns in the Atlantic Monthly and a blog post she had written and was struck by her intimate and detailed knowledge of the process by which the Dietary Guidelines, initially put together by an committee of experts, get subtly altered before they reach their final form.

Subsequently I purchased two of her books and have been reading my way through her absolutely superb book, “What to Eat.” I’ve been stunned by her depth of knowledge and have learned many new facts. Today I looked at her bio and realized she’s been directly involved with the Dietary Guidelines in the past, has both a Masters’ degree in public health nutrition and a Ph.D in molecular biology.

The book itself is stellar and won the James beard Foundation award for best food reference in 2007. Dr. Nestle examines the trillion dollar/year US food industry and walks you through the sections of a supermarket commenting as she goes. I’ll mention a few of the more striking areas today, but will try to pick out more over the next few posts I do. I think you should read this book yourself.

When you enter an average supermarket in this country, you’re confrounded with an enormous array of choices. She estimates you have 30,000 plus to pick from. So how do you get to the items on your shopping list? Well first you have to pass artfully, probably a better term is cunningly, arranged shelves and more shelves with food items you didn’t plan to buy.

The placement of those food choices is far from random. If your goal, like mine, is to shop the periphery, mostly purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables and a few dairy items, you’ll still pass through a gauntlet of deliberately placed, often highly processed, foods, many of which have lengthy ingredient lists. And you’ll likely find the things you do wish to buy have less carefully been arranged.

Why is this? Well to start with the government subsidizes the production of a few items: corn, soybeans, sugar beets and sugarcane, but not that of other fruits and vegetables. And the major food companies (that includes a much smaller number of them than I had once thought), don’t make as much money from the items on my shopping list, but lots more from foods that have been augmented, processed and made to appear appetizing to adults and, in some cases to children.

So the next time you’re in a supermarket, go there with your own shopping list and try to stick to it. Look at ingredient lists if you do buy processed foods; check out the fat, sugars (sic) and salt contents of anything you buy. And start to look at what is placed where in the store. Decide what’s been put there to catch your attention and to tempt you to buy.

Happy shopping.