How this works

Editorial policy

This site is about a spending decision, not a health scare. That distinction sets most of the rules below.

What this site is

A tool for allocating a limited grocery budget across foods that differ in nutrition, price, and measured pesticide residue evidence. The output is a shopping order, not a risk assessment.

Language we do not use

No "danger score", "toxicity score", "cancer risk", or "safety rating". No skulls, poison bottles, gas masks, or "toxic" labels. Not because the topic is unimportant, but because those framings assert a risk gradient the underlying data does not establish.

The scores here are named for what they measure: relative pesticide residue evidence and organic upgrade priority. We are not going to rename them for engagement.

The line we hold on produce

The evidence that eating more fruit and vegetables improves health outcomes is strong and consistent. The evidence that residues at typical measured U.S. levels cause harm is not.

Any framing that would plausibly lead a reader to eat less produce is a failure of this site, regardless of how much traffic it earns. Where the organic version is unaffordable, our answer is always to buy the conventional one.

Uncertainty is published, not smoothed

Sample counts appear on every food page. Small sets are visibly small.
Below 50 conventional samples, we decline to rank.
Where a commodity has no organic sample set and a material conventional index, the verdict is "insufficient data" — a real answer, not a placeholder.
Where any estimate substitutes for a measurement, it is labelled on the page as an estimate.
The dataset's overall status is stated on every page that shows a number, including when it is provisional.

Scope limits

This is general information about food shopping. It is not medical, dietary, or nutritional advice, it is not personalised to any medical condition, and it does not account for allergies, pregnancy, or clinical dietary requirements. For those, talk to a clinician or a registered dietitian.

How claims get on the site

Every quantitative claim traces to a row in the dataset or a formula in the methodology.
Qualitative claims — storage advice, preparation notes, label explanations — are limited to statements that are uncontroversial in food science and are written to be checkable.
Where reputable sources disagree, we say so rather than picking the more dramatic side. The annual watch-list debate is covered this way.

Commercial disclosure

The site currently carries no advertising, affiliate links, or sponsored placements. If that changes, it will be disclosed on this page and on any page that carries them before it goes live — and no commercial relationship will be allowed to influence a score, a ranking, or a verdict, which are all computed rather than chosen.

Privacy

Your grocery list is stored in your own browser using local storage. It is never uploaded, and there is no account to create. Clearing your browser data clears the list.

Corrections

Errors get fixed and logged publicly. See the corrections policyfor how to report one and what happens next.