How safe is green?

The green fresh vegetables available in the market everybody knows contains high contents of pesticides, but it has now emerged that more harmful chemicals are present in alarmingly high doses across the country. Few years back a report by the Agriculture Ministry showed that there has been an almost two-fold increase in the number of samples having pesticides above the permitted Maximum Residue Level (MRL) in vegetables, fruits, meat and spices. 

The major culprits were green chilli, cauliflower, cabbage, brinjal, okra, tomato, capsicum and coriander leaves. The samples were picked up from Mandis, retail shops and also from farm gates. The situation was equally alarming in this part of the region. A large number of vegetables grown included spinach, coriander leaves, capsicum and okra and a large part of vegetables available have high presence of pesticides. 

Recently, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) had proposed regulations for heavy metal content in a whole range of food items including vegetables to hold traders accountable and also to persuade Indian farmers to do responsible farming and adopt good practices. In developed countries, consumers get safe food, including fresh vegetables. 

Once these standards are in place to carry out tests instantly and disseminate the information to people, that will create an atmosphere where everyone in the production and supply chain will behave responsibly. Interestingly, the Agriculture Ministry’s report showed that the number of samples having high dose of pesticide was more in samples picked up from Mandis than the ones collected from the farm gate. 

Consuming pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables for a long period of time can prove fatal affecting the nervous system and other important organs such as liver and kidney. Food wasn’t always so scary. For most of human history, we ate our meats, grains, fruits and vegetables pretty much the way we found them. Oh sure, as our species got more sophisticated, we cooked, ground, dried and aged things a bit. But in the past 60 years, our foodstuffs have changed dramatically, and not all for the better.