I don't think you really want to know CC! "Washing" isn't going to remove pesticide residue from citrus peel, not the kind of pesticides they use on oranges. It will remove dirt though! You can find some info online on how much washing removes pesticides, but it isn't very much. When I make marmelade, I always wash the oranges with soap and warm water. It still doesn't do all that much and I try to buy organic oranges for my marmelade.

You ingest a lot of pesticides if you eat conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables, so if you're not worried about that then I woudn't worry about these oranges.

CC, if you saw what went into apple cider you'd never drink it again, which is why most apple cider is pasteurized anymore. "Drops", insects, whatever, and they aren't washed because that would wash off the "natural yeasts" that are supposed to give cider its flavor.

Now, I wash my apples before I press them, and cut out any pieces of worms, etc, but the big guys don't, they just pasteurize those "additions", LOL.

Orange juice is more acidic than apple juice, so I wouldn't worry about pasteurization, but if you drink any commercial juice at all, you're getting the pesticides from the spraying of the fruit. Some are sprayed more, some less, but unless it's organic, it's sprayed, and organic farmers are allowed to use certain sprays as well so even that isn't free of it.

If you like it, I say drink it. (shrug) It probably doesn't have anything in it than Tropicana does.

Annie

LOL, Lpink, we must have been posting at the same time. Great minds.....(grin)

Annie

CC, you have no idea of what a bag 'o worms you brought up for me!

During my childhood & early adult years there was always a box of oranges in the garage that I grabbed whenever walking by or squeezed into morning OJ. I'm certain I've consumed gallons of fresh OJ.

The oranges were grown on my sister & BIL's ranch; primarily a couple thousand acres of Thompson seedless grapes that went to the Sunmaid packing house; but a large enough citrus grove to feed the entire local extended family. As a kid, I played in the dirt and under the shade of those orange trees with my cars & trucks.

Now, I understand that today we have government regulations in place that, hopefully, prevent this type of thing from repeating itself. What type of thing, you might be wondering. Well, the land where those orange tree groves grew became one of America's first Superfund Sites. Yep, not just contaminated. Really contaminated ground. Who knew? Should my sister & BIL have known?? Oh, how many times I've asked myself that question. There will not be an answer. They are both deceased. I've been sick since I was 9 years old. Today, I have quite an array of auto-immune diseases. My 2 neices (sister's kids) also have auto-immune diseases. Coincidence? Maybe. Contaminated food supply? Maybe. Plus we played on that acreage all day long during our entire childhoods. We swam in the pool filled with water from the property's wells. We bathed in the same water after a day rolling in the dirt or swimming. Our ice tea was made from that water. So was our Kool-Aid.

It's public information. The EPA's website gives considerable space to this piece of property. It's cost US taxpayers millions & more millions of dollars over 3 decades to remedy (site work continues even today). I was back for a visit a few years ago. I stood with my nose pressed against the barbed wire with the sign, "No Tresspassing - United States Federal Superfund Site". I could see into the windows of the house where I spent so many years. The same blue chairs were visible through the living room windows that I sat on Christmas Eves to open my presents. The swimming pool, of course, has been removed as have the citrus groves.

Moral to my story? Wash the d@mn oranges. Buy organic whenever you can. If you have to eat less because it's expensive, make adjustments. Our organic regulations are not perfect. Far from perfect. But they are at least something. Follow Annie's advice - grow whatever you can using organic sustainable methods. Everytime you make a choice for your family's table - beware of what you're choosing.

In my case, only 25 acres of nearly 2,000 were contaminated. That's the good news. The only good news. Those other 25 acres contained arsenic, chromium, copper, hydrocarbon contaminants (benzene, toluene, xylene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as naphthalene and pyrene). So, most of the commercial crops were safe, I sincerely hope & pray they were. But, the ones I ate were not safe.

Wash the oranges. You'll feel better & I'll feel better. :)

/tricia

I believe absolutely that our food supply, with its pesticides, herbicides, chemical additives, etc. are responsible for our health problems from cancer to heart disease to obesity to diabetes and everything else. Yes, we eat too much, but human beings - or animals - were not meant to eat the stuff we eat today.

For all the talk about nutrition these days, we are still feeding our families oranges with pesticides on them and boxed junk that we call dinner. A lot of it tastes very good, is easy on the budget and easy to prepare. And it's very hard to escape it, even for people like me who grow some vegetables and cook from scratch.

I worry about my grandchildren. Their mothers all "cook" from boxes instead of raw ingredients.

I almost think it's better to skip the oranges than eat the pesticides.

Sherry

Just remember that "organic" means less and less as it becomes more marketable. Back when we were getting retail trade mags, I remember reading a series of articl3es about how the big boys Annie refers to lobbied for loopholes in the organic laws...well, let's say big enough to drive a fleet of Dole and Libby trucks through. It's one of the few times I've ever been mad enough to write my congressman and senators. Of course where I was living at the time -- do I really think Mitch McConnell could care less about organics?

Tricia, what a terrible story!

I'm fairly confident that the sprays used now are much less harmful, but I for one do not wish to eat them. I wash all produce, and if I'm going to zest a lemon or an orange I scrub it well.
The orchard where we pick sour cherries used to have a pitting machine, but I never had mine pitted because I wanted to wash the cherries well before any juice came out.

Annie, I do think about that when cider time comes around, but there's no way I am giving that up!

Googling, I see that Tropicana washes the oranges before juicing. Some other things suggest that oranges are washed before being boxed and shipped. I have to dig more to find out if this is generally true; I'd still rather they were washed just before juicing.

Realistically we are not going to make our own juice, although I love fresh orange juice. DH drinks vast amounts of Tropicana. I find it a little too acidic, and like the market stuff much better, pricey though it is. Oh, lordy, I hope there's not a juicer in my future. There's no room!

I had a large Valencia orange tree in Venice, but now I only have a small one and will probably not get oranges for a couple of years yet. The previous owners' dogs kept the orange tree from growing and they completely killed another orange tree - the only trees that I liked in my new back yard. I now have Meyer lemon and Bearss lime trees growing in wine barrel planters, where they can live fine for a couple of years before I plant them in the ground. In Venice I had mature lemon, lime, mango, and fig trees, and I did not wash the fruit unless it looked dirty. I certainly never washed any of the figs. I never sprayed any of the trees, and I used natural methods for keeping pests under control, such as worm casings spread around the tree. When I did wash citrus or mangoes, I used only water. However, I never had my soil tested, and I don't know that much about the soil in my back yard now, but the lemon and lime trees are growing in potting soil, which I guess is okay. I'm concerned that parts of the yard may have had bad things dumped on them. There is one corner of the yard where grass will not grow, and so I put the bird bath over it.

Lars

Lars,

A soil test is always a good idea with a new property even with no known contamination. You never know what a previous owner has dumped in the soil. I don't think all extension services test for heavy metal contamination though? In my case, my sister owned the largest wood pressure treating facility west of the Mississippi. They had the contract for all CA's highway posts plus all of the grape stakes in the Valley. The plant was located on part of the Superfund 25 acres. It was the plant that contaminated the soil, not the spraying of the trees. That said, many ranchers, during the 60s and 70s, stored their heavy equipment & had their repair shops located adjacent to the farmland where runoff was a problem.

I'm so jealous of you being able to grow figs. There's a fig tree, sold by White Flower Farm here in CT, that's supposedly hardy to Zone 7 (my zone)...I'm going to give it a try.

/tricia

Below is a link to one of the more famous consumer advocate group studies on pesticide residues found on fruits and veggies. Oranges are in the middle between high and low. Of course it depends on what you mean by "pesticide" and it depends on where the oranges came from and how they were processed, (oranges are grown in many places in our country and abroad and can be mixed so that one source is used on month and another source the next), so there are many different variables so probably hard to give a definitive answer. But, there is actually a lot in the scientific literature about this, but you'll have to go to a library for that unless you already belong to some kind of Web site that gives you access to scientific journals and reports.

Here is a link that might be useful: Shopper's Guide to Pesticides

If they came from my yard, they'd be pesticide free but covered with bird poop and dirt. Oranges sit on the tree for a LONG time!

Tricia, I thought you were in California. Thanks for the info about soil testing - I think I do want to do it before I plant any fruit trees in the ground. On one part of the yard, the previous owner had spray painted some of the dead grass, but it didn't fool anyone. I think the paint was worse than dead grass. Parts of the soil are rather dry and cracked in my back yard, and we were told to make sure that we kept the gutters in good shape so that water would not get under the house. We seem to be on the top of a hill or ridge, as the front and back yards slope away from the house - especially the front yard, which is fairly steep. I am curious to find out if we can learn what was dumped in the back yard.

Off the subject somewhat - how do you dispose of used cooking oil, oil that has been used for deep frying? I don't want to dump it down the sink because I don't want it to clog the sewer, and I don't want to dump it in the back yard either. Should I dump it in the front yard or should I package it for garbage pickup?

Lars

Lars, I have the perfect disposal. David heats his garage with a furnace meant to burn used motor oil, used vegetable oil, whatever. I take my used kitchen oil out to him and his garage smells like french fries, LOL.

I wouldn't dump it in the yard, you could attract animals and insects. I'd leave it for garbage pickup.

Annie

While we're off-topic ...

Lars, I save small plastic tubs and their covers (e.g., from margarine or cottage cheese), and when I have cooking oil to dispose of, or the fatty liquid drained from meatloaf, I pour it into one of the tubs and then put it in the freezer until garbage day. That way, it won't get smelly in the house or attract animals outside. (I also wrap and freeze trimmings and scraps from meat, for the same reason. I have a designated bin in the freezer door for such refuse.)

Now back to your regularly scheduled topic!

As for the oranges: could you buy some of the oranges at the fruit stand, and then take them home, peel them, and squeeze your own juice? It's more work, but you'd get the same taste as the prepared stuff they sell, without the pesticides.

Sue

Oops! I see that you've already stated that you wouldn't want to squeeze the oranges yourself. I can certainly understand that. I do it only when I need some orange juice for a recipe, but not for drinking purposes.

Sue

When we lived in Florida, there was a small orange grove near us (WiloMar, I think). Anyway, they had a cool contraption there with a hose and rolling rack that turned and cleaned all the picked oranges. Feel better? But I live dangerously and eat apples right off the orchard trees at pick your own places. Oranges too.

Jo