{"id":13458,"date":"2013-11-13T22:17:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T16:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/?p=13458"},"modified":"2015-10-20T17:26:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T11:56:53","slug":"are-we-eating-fruits-and-vegetables-or-pesticides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/food\/are-we-eating-fruits-and-vegetables-or-pesticides","title":{"rendered":"Are we eating fruits and vegetables or pesticides?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The skyrocketing price of fruits and vegetables is not the only issue; so is the amount of pesticide residues these contain. It is surprising to know that most of the vegetables and fruits have an alarming percentage of harmful chemicals, which is far above the permissible limit prescribed by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. Even some of the banned pesticides are now part of our diet, such as Cypermethrin, Heptachlor, Quinalphos, Aldrin, Chlorodane, Dichlorvas, Cypermethrin. Some vegetables have been categorized as extremely harmful in terms of levels of pesticide.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a study conducted by the Kerala Agricultural University, \u201cdangerous levels\u201d of pesticide residues have been found in many main vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, small red onions, curry leaves, green chillies, etc. About three years ago, Profenofos, which is a second-level pesticide, was banned in India, except for tea and cotton. But its residues have been found in vegetables like gooseberries, green chilli, okra, curry leaves, mint leaves and coriander leaves.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Delhi High Court had earlier in May this year asked the government to conduct surprise inspection of vegetable and fruit markets at random. It had been found that 90% of the mangoes in the city contained harmful chemicals. Most of these were used to ripen the green mangoes yellow overnight. Some of these chemicals were carcinogenic.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are we consuming?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

We are literally consuming poisons. Let\u2019s have a brief look:<\/span><\/p>\n