#210 Organic Food is it Really Worth It?

Dr Rupy: Is organic food worth it and should you opt for organic food every time you go to the supermarket? That is going to be the topic of today's conversation. I'm also going to go through the basics of what a pesticide is, why we should be aiming to reduce our exposure to them, and practical shopping tips including the types of ingredients that I tend to opt for organic when I'm shopping for my weekly meals. Before we get started, I want to give you the five takeaways right at the top of this podcast. Number one, don't sweat it. The first thing that you want to be thinking about is diversity of your ingredients because more plants rather than conventional versus organic has a lot more evidence for it. So rather than focusing on the detrimental impact of eating non-organic, I want you to always think about more plants, more diversity and the basics of healthy eating before we get into the weeds of actually organic versus conventional, even though it is a very important topic. Number two, reducing pesticides is, underline, important for human and environmental health. I don't want to discount that at all. Third, if you can make small swaps to organic foods, prioritise those foods that you tend to consume more of. And generally, this includes things like citrus fruits, grapes, berries and some types of greens as well. To reduce the cost, I would start with the staples as well, so grains and other carbohydrates that we'll talk about. And I think the last thing is, this can't be something that we have to put on ourselves solely. We've got to be supporting wider organisations that are pushing for more policy changes that allow what's in our food to become a lot more healthful for us, a lot more transparent and a lot better for environmental health as well. And stick around to the end of the podcast because I'm going to talk to you about why everything I say for the next few minutes or so, probably more than a few minutes, could be complete BS. So I want to call myself out because we're working with dirty data and limitations of which I will be very, very transparent about right at the at the bottom of this podcast. And before you listen to anyone else talking about why you should never eat conventional food or you should always go for organic, just remember the limitations that I'm going to do right at the at the bottom of this podcast. So, let's start with the basics. Pesticides. What is a pesticide? So, a pesticide is a chemical substance or biological agent that's used to control or repel or kill or manage pests. And pests, most people think about rats or rodents when they think about pests, but they can also include things like weeds, fungi, bacteria, viruses, aphids, other organisms that can be harmful to the growth of a crop that you're trying to optimise. The perfect pesticide would be an agent that is inert to non-targets, i.e. us, so things like obviously humans, but microbes, other organisms in the environment, and solely target the pest that we're trying to get rid of or to to manage, and also a pesticide that would be perfect is something that's not going to have any long-term environmental consequences. Obviously, that's far from reality and that would be an absolute unicorn. Pesticides do get a bad rap. I think even the word pesticide or herbicide just seems to conjure up a a dirty sort of world. But before we get into the weeds of why pesticides are harmful and why we need to reduce them, they are really, really important. And I think without agro-petrochemicals, we would have famines, we have crop diseases that affect human health at scale. The green revolution was incredible, but there does need to be a balance between everything. I'll give you an example for which there isn't a pesticide, but in tomatoes, there is a there are a number of different issues including viroids. So a viroid is the smallest known pathogen of plants and it consists of a single strand of RNA. If you think about your DNA is the double helix, RNA is just a single strand of your genes. And four viroids have been isolated in the UK that pose a significant threat to tomato production. I'll give you an example. So potato spindle tuber viroid, also known as PSTVd, is probably the most well-known of all the different viroids in the farming community. It's got worldwide distribution. It's been found in outbreaks have been found in the UK, Germany, Netherlands that are responsible for huge amounts of production of food globally, in greenhouses. And at the moment, there isn't a way in which to rid a greenhouse of an infection with this particular viroid. It involves hygiene, hand washing, completely disinfecting every area, having to move to a new facility. It's almost like the COVID of tomatoes that exists in many different forms for which there is no vaccine, no treatment whatsoever. And you could argue that this is the result of overuse of pesticides, monocultures, inorganic farming practices that has led to this susceptibility. But I just wanted to give you a flavour of what could potentially happen without the use of any sort of control measure or any sort of pesticide because I think there is this incorrect idea that you don't need pesticides at all and it would just it's just all a big money-making scheme. I think there is certainly a huge amount of use for different sorts of pesticides in controlling issues like this that could wipe out massive swathes of of crops for for human at the detriment of human health as well. So before we go into pesticides, I just want you to understand that pesticides do have a use. It's the overuse of them and the lack of other ways of farming and the over-reliance on them that I think has got us to a situation where we're finding pesticide residues in almost all our foods. Okay. Now you know what pesticides are, the different types of pesticides that we have out there. What is organic? Organic is a type of farming that actively lowers the use of pesticides. And it does this via crop rotation, ploughing, other management techniques including the use of things like aphid-eating insects. So it's where you release certain types of insects into by surrounding hedges and that actually controls the the pest that you're trying to manage. There's even this concept of introducing parasitic pests, so a parasitic wasps where they actually lay their eggs in the aphids and then a few days later they emerge and they eat the aphid. I mean it sounds like alien, but it is pretty crazy what what people can do with organic farming practices. There is this idea that organic has no use of pesticides whatsoever. That's incorrect. It's a way of lowering the use of pesticides and there are some approved pesticides that organic farms can can use. Most organic farmers use integrated pest management to control pests and diseases. So that's a system that works with nature rather than the over-reliance on agro-petrochemicals and it means that they're using less pesticides, less regularly and they don't have to rely on them as well. I mentioned that there are some approved pesticides that are used in organic farming. There's around 15 in the UK that are approved as opposed to over 450, I think it's close to 500 conventional farming approved pesticides in the EU database as well. There are going to be some issues as we move, this is for the UK listeners and viewers, there are going to be some issues when we move away from the EU because we're not going to be protected by similar laws. That's a whole wider discussion. Some of the pesticides that are approved for use include pyrethroids, pheromones, deltamethrin, but these are only allowed to be used in insect traps. So you can't have spraying of entire crops with these chemicals. It has to be used in specific measured ways and there also has to be an application to the organic board, I think it's called the OTB, before they can even use these kind of chemicals. So there is a lot more restriction on the use of any pesticides. There are some other more natural sounding pesticides, things like spearmint oil, citronella. I remember using citronella spray actually as a mosquito repellent. Doesn't work as well as DEET, but obviously has less consequences. Quartz sand and a few other minerals that are safe for human consumption and therefore are generally regarded as safe. Those are approved also within organic farming practices. So now you know what a pesticide is, you also know what organic practices is. How organic is organic? I think there's been a a large amount of myth spreading around, well, organic's not really worth it because it's still contaminated. That is true. There are pesticides in soil as well as pesticides that were banned decades ago that we still find in our food. And that's the main reason why they were banned because they're so persistent in our environment. And there is cross-contamination from non-organic farms to organic farming in in agriculture as well as persistence in the environment. But that doesn't mean that organic is completely worthless because the residues, as evidenced by some data that I'll refer to a little bit later in the podcast, is that it's much, much lower in terms of the number of residues that you find in organic foods. The other thing is there are there is no transparent information about these pesticide residues that you find on organic products in supermarkets, which I think is something that needs to change. Although it wouldn't be a very good marketing technique because I think if people saw the conventional products had pesticide residues, the organic products had pesticide residues, you might think, well, there's no point. I'm just going to go for the conventional cheaper option. But actually, as we'll get into a little bit later, it's much much reduced. So I definitely think it is it is worth it. A study of soil in 11 European countries found UK sites had the second highest diversity of pesticide residues. So regardless of the the organic label, you are going to get pesticide residues in and that's just a fact of our environment that's polluted with these chemicals unfortunately. But it is, I just want to underline, whilst organic isn't 100% free, it is vastly, vastly reduced. Now we know about organic, we know about the issues around organic products and not being 100% clean, and we know what pesticides are. What is the evidence that pesticides are harmful? And I think this comes down to the devil being in the dose really. Before we get into what is quite a scary subject, I want you to remember and remind yourselves that you are an absolute detoxifying machine. You have liver, kidneys, you have sweat glands, you have your digestive tract. And I I always use this quite glib example of how detoxifying we are by using the example of a smoker that's been a lifelong smoker, let's say 40, 50 years. They've been ingesting a known carcinogen, a type one carcinogen, 20 times a day and it might take decades before they get a diagnosis of lung cancer, skin cancer, cardiovascular disease, vascular disease. It may never even happen. It might happen earlier than that, but it just it just paints a very, very clear picture of just how incredible we are at removing these carcinogens, removing these pollutants from our body. That isn't to to say that you can have as many chemicals as possible. We definitely need to reduce our our body burden. I'll talk about what body burden is in a second, but just remind yourself just how incredible we are at detoxifying ourselves from from known carcinogens, known pollutants in our environment. We are amazing. That being said, the evidence that pesticides are harmful, everything is a bit unclear. It can be difficult to gauge the full burden of pesticide residue impact on human health because toxicological data is missing for a lot of these active compounds in that there aren't, I mean, given the number of different compounds there are today and how many there have been in the past, the evidence and the studies looking at them individually is lacking. The metabolites of these pesticides again is lacking in terms of looking at what the metabolites of these pesticides could potentially do to us in terms of harm. Pesticide cocktails or the mixtures of these different pesticides haven't been properly assessed. This makes it quite difficult to reliably predict their protracted health impacts over time as it is for consumer products as well, which is why, you know, and I'm I'm in agreement with this move to more clean consumer products for the same reasons because we don't have the evidence around the potential potential negative impacts of these. Okay. Studies also have methodologic problems as well. So exposure misclassification, inadequate exposure assessments, these cause mixed results. There's recall bias in, you know, retrospective case control studies. So this is all to say that the long-term impacts of pesticides is unclear, but the general trend is toward negative health outcomes. And there are several positive associations that we see with long-term pesticide exposure as well as acute pesticide exposure. So I won't go into too much detail around the acute pesticide exposures from say workers who are literally spraying or involved in agriculture who have acute exposure because I don't think that paints a clear picture for consumers of products with pesticide residues when it's far removed from the actual farms where they these have been produced. But the long-time pesticide exposure appears to demonstrate links with neurologic and metabolic health consequences, autoimmune conditions, gut biome disturbances, infertility, and yes, an increase in certain cancers as well. You've heard me talk to Professor Shanna Swan on the podcast about the fertility effects of plastics, and we also talked about pesticides there as well. So, you know, there's a whole combination effect here. This is why I started with um uh the the point about how detoxifying we are as as in our human bodies, but there is a cocktail of all these different chemicals that we're being exposed to on a daily basis. Um one thing I thought would be useful is to look at some of the biggest consumers in the world of pesticides. Um and I came across a a study that was published in Frontiers in Public Health in 2022 and they looked at one of the biggest consumers of pesticides in the world, which is Brazil. And Brazil, 80% of the, I mean, Brazil has a particular problem. Um and it's I just want to go through a couple of the points. Um 80% of pesticides that are authorised for use in their country are not allowed in at least three countries of the OECD European community. So they've got a a a much higher tolerance for the health effects of pesticides, their government does anyway. Um it's estimated, and I'm not too sure how they did this estimation because the actual original papers are in Spanish, so you're going to have to forgive me. Uh but they estimated that each Brazilian consumes an average of 7 litres of pesticides per year. Um there are many uh acute and chronic poisonings uh per annum, 70,000. Um I mean, Brazil has a huge population, but 70,000 is still a huge number. Um they export most of their products to China and US. Um so whilst they might have lax regulations uh that are more lax than other countries, they still export a lot of their products to other countries uh that might have tighter regulations, although the US does not. The biggest global consumers of pesticides, as you would imagine, US, China, Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine, uh Canada, UK is number 25. Um so we're still big global consumers of pesticides in the grand scheme of things, but nowhere near as much as China, US and Brazil, they're the top three. A lot of these studies uh in this systemic review um from Brazil were in Spanish, so I can't corroborate and thoroughly scrutinise, but there are a number of epidemiological studies that demonstrate associations between uh biomarkers of endocrine alterations, so this can be thyroid conditions, uh it could be um metabolic health uh issues and contamination with organochlorine pesticides in polluted areas. They obviously have a huge correlation with mortality rates from congenital malformations in the under one-year group. So this is a group along with pregnant uh women who uh are uniquely susceptible to pesticides um because of the uh the growth of and neurodevelopment um uh during that that time of um uh development. So uh that's particularly worrying and I think that might be something to bookmark for any uh people listening to this um who are thinking about getting pregnant or who are pregnant or have young children to opt for organic products that might be a pertinent or opt for more organic products. That might be a pertinent decision to make considering these associations. I do want to heighten that these are associations and causation hasn't been fully elucidated, but I'm I'm on the side of uh the the precautionary principle. Um and overall, all articles in this topic have found that increased exposure to pesticides is related um to uh uh central nervous system damage as well. They also discussed the occurrence of cancer as a result of exposure to pesticides. Um they did obtain a significant sample of over 12 million Brazilians from different areas of the country as well and declared that consistent association uh with greater exposure to pesticides and more cancers, although it's very loose and again it's observational. So let's talk about uh what the limitations of this might be. You could argue that using Brazilian data uh and and trying to compare this to us is not comparing apples to apples, completely different nation, much bigger consumers of pesticides. And I agree they have vastly different exposures and much more pesticides in their supply chain. But we still import plenty of food from other countries including the US and and China and India. I think with Brexit, that's only going to get uh more. Um as we need to harness and um nurture trade ties with other countries to secure supply. We know what's going on with the the war right now in Eastern Europe. Um our food supply is still contaminated with DDT and that was banned decades ago. We still find DDT contaminated samples and this has been shown in the report that I'll go into a little bit more detail a bit later uh by the PRF. So the PRF are a government organisation that stands for pesticide residues in food. Um and there are a committee uh that look at pesticide residues on an annual or quarterly basis and they they produce these annual reports and they have clearly uh discussed as recently as two years ago in their or in the latest annual report uh that DDT which is banned, it's an organochloride and it was banned because it is persistent in the environment, it lasts over 100 years, it concentrates in the fatty tissues of mammals like birds and fish. Um it can remain, you know, for yeah, decades. Um we're still uh dealing with DDT in in our country. So the exposure to countries even though they're far removed from us, it's still going to be um affecting us as well. It's a global issue, it's not something that we can wall ourselves off from here in the UK. Um glyphosate um is something that is probably the most contentious pesticide uh in the world. Um it's one of the most common common active ingredients that are used. Um it's a it's a herbicide, um it's marketed as Roundup by Monsanto. Um it's been phased out in France, um but actually in the UK it's increased uh and the use of the of its increases um uh by around 400% in the last 20 years. So yes, Brazil has its own issues, we also have our own issues as well. Um and that's why I think it's still pertinent for us to look at these far-removed countries even though they're much bigger consumers because in the in the absence of rock solid evidence, I think we need to weigh up the potential harms uh and the potential benefits um of exposure to these products. And so using the precautionary principle alone, I think moving to a more organic farming system is a pretty reasonable approach. Um so this isn't to scaremonger, I think this warrants a pragmatic um full-on discussion. I'd love to speak to someone from uh PRF as well about this in a bit more detail as they're they're closer to the data on this. Um but I think organic farming systems as uh the point of as the the goal is a is a reasonable approach. And you know, we still don't have a clear idea of the compounding effect, um also referred to as the cocktail effect uh of these different pesticides. So I'd I'd feel safer to assume and I'd be happy to be incorrect in the future, but I'd feel safer to assume that these are not healthy and we should be um reducing uh our exposure to them. And that leads me to the next question. So we've talked about pesticides, we've talked about organic, we've talked about uh some of the evidence that it is not safe. Um what is the evidence on the other hand that eating organic is helpful uh or or even healthful? Um so looking at a meta-analysis that was published in the British Journal of Nutrition, they uh reviewed 343 peer-reviewed publications and found that the concentrations of something that we talk about a lot on the uh podcast, polyphenols, um which are uh micronutrients that you find concentrated in fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds. Um we know that gives uh their healthful properties because um they're anti-inflammatory, they have antioxidant benefits, um they can activate your immune system, they're healthful for your microbes. There's a whole plethora of benefits that we always talk about on the on the podcast here. But they found that the concentrations of these different micronutrients uh were substantially higher in organic crops versus conventionally based crops. And the reason why is because your polyphenols, um these uh these phytochemicals that we that the umbrella term is phytochemical, um so um also known as um uh phytonutrients. Um these these phytochemicals are the crop defence system. Uh so when a crop uh is growing in the wild, uh to protect itself from insects, from the pests that we currently spray them with at the moment, they develop the production of these different chemicals to to veer them off, to to essentially um poison them and kill them um before they eat the their entire body, uh let's say. Um so the more uh they have to endure uh uh hard weather, insects, um all the different issues that you'd find in the wild, they have to develop more of these different phytonutrients. These phytonutrients, although they are natural insecticides, are actually healthful for us in the right quantities, which is why, you know, if you overeat something like kale or spinach, you're probably going to get too many of these different uh products and you don't want to be having overconsuming them, though it's very, very hard to do. But in the right doses, it is a mild stressor to our own body that actually leads to a beneficial outcome. The analogy I always use for this is like exercise. If you exercise your muscles and you you did a snapshot of your muscles in that short period of time, you'll see all the muscle fibres are sheared, torn, there's inflammation everywhere. You think this is a very unhealthy activity, but over time, the repairing effect of those leads to hypertrophy, better resilience of those muscle fibres, a stronger muscle fibre, that net benefit is um that that is a net benefit over the long term. Sort of the same thing with uh polyphenols. When you're consuming them, there's a mild stressor actually leads to uh something uh called the ARE, so it's um uh the the antioxidant uh I think it's the antioxidant regeneration effect. Um so it basically it improves your uh your tolerance of these um chemicals and and leads to a net beneficial outcome. Um it activates your natural antioxidant system. That's essentially what it does. So with this in mind, if you are putting crops in an unnatural environment, you're uh giving them hydroponics where they have all the nutrients that they need, you're giving them the right temperatures, you're spraying them with uh pesticides so they don't need to develop these uh different chemicals, you can understand why they don't need to produce as many and why in conventional products, they're much lower than in organic products. So that there's the the sort of simple reasoning as to why we find that using the statistics, they they found uh a 20 to 40% increase in phytochemicals in organic foods rather than versus uh conventional foods. On balance, now I I've said all these things and I would love to believe that because of the increase in polyphenols, this leads to uh a better health effect of organic products, but I don't think that there is today convincing evidence that you will be healthier on an organic diet. I think the idea that because polyphenols are 30 to 40% higher in organic produce, they are therefore healthier for you, doesn't have much uh evidence for. I'd love to believe it does. Um and it stands to reason, but there's nothing to stand for it other than the loose association and observational studies uh which have plenty of co-found uh uh confounders like um their healthy user bias, for example. So there are some studies that show, okay, those who have organic products in their diet or more organic products have a lower risk of cancer, but you know, it's very hard to disentangle the person who uh opts for organic products uh is most likely going to be quite a health-conscious consumer who will exercise, who go to sleep on time, uh who might have a country home and they go there every weekend, they have much lower stress levels, uh they're generally more affluent. I don't know someone who is struggling to meet the bills every week opting for organic products. I think that's uh very unlikely. So there's so so many different confounders and even though there are quite big effects that we've seen in these observational studies, it's very, very hard to prove out, even though I'd like to to to believe that. Um the the organic uh movement does have benefits outside of um the potential increase in in polyphenols that I think are still worth it as well. Um so even though what I've said doesn't is probably not convincing for you to to buy organic today, um I I think I still think there are reasons to buy organic. One of them is we get to vote with how we uh pay for things in the supermarket for what we want to see in the future for our children, for uh the planet. And organic farms are essentially havens for wildlife. Um because of the way they use crop rotation systems and natural um uh insects, uh aphid-eating insects, they essentially grow hedges around them. They uh that's a a haven not just for the uh insects that will help uh the organic farm, but other insects as well and the general um uh environment um for for other uh bees and and ants and and all these other uh critters that provide a lot of nutrition for the soil as well. Um they're also protective against uh birds and and butterflies and bees of which many pesticides are uh detrimental to. Um and actually uh there is some evidence to show that plant, insect and bird life is 50% more abundant uh on organic farms. So it stands to reason because of the harshness of pesticides on these uh communities of organisms as well. I think the third thing, so, you know, if you if you're convinced by the polyphenol argument and you want to consume organic for that reason, that's totally fine. All I'm saying is that there is not too much evidence for. Number two, the environmental impact. If you're an environmentalist, I think we're all moving in that direction and you want to see that, great, you know, organic's definitely the way forward. I think the third most convincing uh argument is body burden. Um and your body burden is likely to be lower. What what is body burden? So, for context, your your body burden uh refers to the cumulative impact of various synthetic chemicals that include heavy metals, uh toxic substances that can be found in the human body and it can be uh concentrated in bloodstream, fat, most likely. Um at any time that's acquired from your environment, so that could be pollutants from cars, uh the microparticles that we find from combustion, um it could be from personal care products, uh it could be from water, um it could be from and obviously from food as well. So, if you're reducing your the pesticide residues, and I I hasten to to use the word reduce, if you're reducing your load of pesticides by going organic, your body burden is likely to be lower and therefore the risks to health are potentially lower as well. So, I I think uh the organic sort of argument really goes down to how risk tolerant we are um to pesticides. And I I'm I'm, you know, precautionary principle. Uh I just want to underline the fact that that is uh probably the best argument, I would say, for going organic. Um if if we are, you know, uh individualists here and we just really care about ourselves and not really the environment and everything else, reducing your body burden, uh that's likely to be lower. And there are some studies that show that uh as well. So, by now, you should have a a general understanding of of everything, pesticides, organic, how organic is organic, what the uh the potential benefits of organic are, what the evidence for pesticides harms are. Let's talk about practical tips. I think, you know, this is all super scary. Um remind yourself that you're a detoxifying machine. What is the number one practical tip uh for for me to say? I would say diversity on your plate is the number one priority because that improves your digestive system, it reduces inflammation, it has all the health benefits, and we know that in the studies that we look at in terms of collection of uh ingredients, um largely uh plant-based diet, lots of uh variety, those are where we see the associations with health benefits. It does not discriminate between organic and inorganic at the moment, but I would say that's probably the most convincing argument I have for nutrition. So, always think about your nutrition, what you're putting on your plate first, rather than uh the the criteria of those individual whole unprocessed foods. A whole unprocessed, diverse, colourful diet is your number one goal. Number two, let's get into the details of, okay, I've done that, tick, tick, tick, I exercise, I uh sleep really well, I try and reduce my stress, I get a diverse diet. These are all things. I want to take my health to the next level. I want to be a lot more pragmatic. Going back to the expert uh committee on pesticide residues in food, PRiF, um they are appointed by Defra in the UK, um the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. There is a similar organisation in the states that is approved, I believe, by the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration. And they're these guys uh over here in the UK, PRiF, are entirely made up of independent members with a wide range of expertise. I've looked at their um uh contributors list and they're a number of scientists, people with masters in public health, people with a politics background, like all all sort of like huge range of of expertise. And they advise on pesticide residues in uh a food monitoring program. It occurs quarterly, they do a basket of goods and uh they use the most up-to-date lab testing uh means that they're completely transparent about. Um and you can find their reports uh I've linked them in the show notes as all the um uh the the data and the stats that I'm using in today's episode on the doctorskitchen.com website. You can go check it out there. You can download them yourself from the gov.uk website. Um and uh their quarterly uh results are uh reports are really comprehensive. Um so for example, uh just to give you an example of the 11th report which was done in 2021, there's a little bit of a lag between them and that will come down to my limitations at the bottom of this podcast episode. Um in 2021, they reviewed 3,500 samples of food and drink available in the UK supply chain and they were tested uh for pesticide residues and they did almost 400 different pesticides that they tested for as well. So, what everyone's probably wondering uh is, okay, what are the the top uh fruit and veg to buy organic in the UK? Um so, their latest list, uh and this is done by the number of ingredients that had multiple residues on in in the UK. Number one, topping the list was grapefruit. Grapes was number two, banana, berries and small fruits. They didn't specify what small fruits, but they said berries and small fruits. Peppers, raspberries, spring greens and kale. So, you're seeing a bit of a pattern here. It's citrus, there's exotic fruits, bananas, berries, um that tend to be sprayed and, you know, strawberries are a big contender for that as well. Um peppers, can't really explain, and then spring greens and kale. Um so that there is a bit of a pattern there. But, and I the the way this list has been compiled, um looks specifically at multiple residues. So they they look at every single ingredient, they look at uh the amount of pesticides, the number of pesticides found, the uh number of multiple residues found in that. So if they had more than one different pesticide that they found evidence of, um and then they also look at the number of times they tested and they found that the pesticide residue was above the minimum required level. So there's a a minimum upper limit that is permitted for pesticide residues on these products. This is purely looking at the top offenders for those who had multiple residues on an individual ingredient. If you look at another way is looking at the ingredients that perhaps have less occurrence of multiple residues, but more instances where the residues are beyond that minimum required limit. And if you look at the case of 2021, which is the latest data that we have for, it's a very different picture. And I'll go through those. Number one, beans with pods. Number two, okra. Number three, herbs. It just says herbs, it doesn't specify which herbs, whether it was dill, parsley, coriander, doesn't say. And remember, this is the minimum required uh limit exceeded the number of times that this exceeded the minimum required limit. So it might just have one pesticide, but it might be a quite a high amount. Number four, pumpkin and squash. Number five, peas with pods. Six, kiwi, seven, dried beans, eight, rice. We're going to rice in a bit. So, very different uh way of of looking at the same data set. You can classify them as those who had multiple residues on. So you could argue that there's a cocktail effect going on there. I'm I'm more worried about that. Um or you could look at, okay, well, there's no cocktail effect going on, but the pesticide residues are super high in these individual ingredients. So you might want to opt for ones that and there there is a bit of a pattern there as well, I would say. Uh okra, uh pumpkin, um beans with pods, dried beans, kiwi, tend to be grown outside uh of the UK. So you might find that the uh restrictions on pesticide use might be uh a little bit more lax uh in the countries that are growing these or the greenhouses or wherever they might be. Um so, yeah, it's something again to to consider. Um and I think one other thing in terms of technology that I'd love to see is at home personal uh testing kits to see what my current body burden is, uh the cocktail of pesticides, the cocktail of plastics that might be in me, and measuring myself six months down the line after I made changes to see, you know, what what what benefit that's had if any. Um again, with the caveat that that could cause some health anxiety as well. But personally, I I'd love to know that. Look, there are loads of things that I've talked about today. There are loads of practices that I think you should focus on. A, you are a detoxifying machine. B, the best evidence that we have is to diversify your plate, have a uh plant predominant diet, um and uh eat uh as as healthily as possible, exercise. We know sweat is one of the main ways in which we rid ourselves of pollutants uh and uh things like heavy metals, cadmium, for example. Sauna might actually be one way in which to uh encourage that process as well as exercise that has those cardiovascular benefits. Um by virtue of diversifying your food and having a high fibre diet, you're going to be removing environmental pollutants via the digestive tract. Something that we've talked about before uh when we talked about PCOS and and inflammatory bowel disease, um removing the estrogen uh effect of these environmental pollutants, minimising our plastic exposure, so not heating in plastic containers, trying to use glass where possible. That again is one way in which we can reduce our overall body burden. Um and trying to support uh and buy organic for our staples as much as possible. So, a really hope you enjoyed this. It was meant to be a short episode, but I've gone on a little bit. There are so many more things that I could go on to. If you do have any questions, just holler at me at Twitter uh at Dr's_kitchen. Sign up for the Doctor's Kitchen newsletter every single week. We do seasonal Sundays, we do eat, listen, read where I share recipes and we talk about um what you can uh uh eat to live a healthy uh uh healthy lifestyle to have a a healthy way of living. Uh all these things are going to compound to improve your resilience against things like pesticides uh and um uh and all the other conditions that we talk about every single week. I really hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you here next time.