Green Options

It’s strawberry season, at least for those of us who live in the temperate western or southern regions of the United States.   But before you rush out to snatch up a flat of the sweet-smelling jewels from the stand on the corner, keep in mind that strawberries rank sixth on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen, a list of the twelve most-contaminated fruits and vegetables.  Researchers found a total of thirty-eight pesticides on all the strawberries tested–up to eight different pesticides on a single strawberry alone.  And despite the widespread publicity a few years ago regarding the phase out of methyl bromide, it is still being used on strawberries under critical-use exemptions.

Lick a gummed envelope flap to seal it, and you’ve just tasted corn.  Lather up with shampoo, and you’ve got corn seeping in to your pores.  Brush your teeth, and you’ve got corn in your mouth.  Walk past the perfume counter in any department store, and you’ve just inhaled corn into your lungs.  The madness doesn’t end here.  Corn is everywhere.

For those of us with corn allergies, it’s not just the corn-on-the-cob and the hush-puppies that are the problem, thank you very much.  No, it’s the vitamin D in fortified milk, the food-grade wax coating fresh produce, the dextrose mixed into iodized salt, the citric acid used to rinse loose greens and baby carrots, and the cornstarch filler in baking powder. A friend of mine used to joke that I couldn’t even drink water, and that’s not far-fetched.  If you’ve taken a sip from a bottle of mineral-enhanced water recently, you’ve swallowed corn.