One should be careful while consuming fruits or vegetables. The lush and leafy green cabbage and the "fresh" apple may contain harmful colours and chemicals that can lead to serious health problems. To make their produce look fresher, bigger and mature faster, most Indian farmers are injecting their vegetables with chemicals/hormones. Most common is the use of Oxytocin, a reproductive hormone found in mammals! It does not stop here. Even after the production phase, more chemicals can get added to fruits and vegetables at the selling phase. Fruit sellers may use chemicals like copper sulphate and calcium carbide to ripen bananas and mangoes.
Further, pesticides are used in vegetables and crops to protect them from damage and infestation from insects. However, if the amount of pesticides sprayed on the vegetables is more than the recommended amount, it affects soil, agriculture workers and consumers in one go. The pesticides can leave adverse effects on the nervous system. Harmful pesticides can also cause several hazardous diseases like cancer, liver, kidney and lung damage. Pesticides can also cause loss of weight and appetite, irritability, insomnia, behavioural disorders and dermatological problem. If you have been keeping a tab on the news, you may have noticed the coverage on recent tragic deaths of farmers in Maharashtra due to exposure to pesticides. For the uninitiated, a couple of headlines with links
Indian Express, Oct 8th, 2017 – Pesticide deaths stalk Yavatmal fields: 18 dead, over 800 farmers in hospital
NDTV, Oct 8th, 2017 – 20 farmers die of pesticide poisoning in Maharashtra, some critical
Pesticide usage in India
A couple of weeks back, we had highlighted that India legally allows the use of 50+ pesticides that have been banned the world over. Also, India is the only country in the world that still manufactures DDT. You can read that article here. With the non-existent controls at ground level on the use of these pesticides and chemicals, these sort of disasters were waiting to happen. These dangerous chemicals are what is getting into the food that you, I and our loved ones are consuming daily.
Food that has been grown with the help of chemicals or hormones will not show its adverse effect on human health immediately after consumption. But it can have an effect later, sometimes as late as after a couple of generations. Read about a study to the same effect published in the journal of BMC medicine here.
So aren't we putting our kid's health to risk by feeding them pesticide-laden food? But are there any alternatives? Kids need nutrition, and the best source is green leafy vegetables and salad greens. Why not grow your food? Think about it.
Happy Growing!