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Pesticide & nutrition map

Every fruit and vegetable in the database, placed by residue evidence against nutrient density. Four quadrants, four different things to do about them.

36 of 36 foods shown

Upgrade here firstHigher nutrition, more residue evidence

Best overallHigher nutrition, lower residue evidence

Most room to trade upNormal nutrition, more residue evidence

Easy conventionalNormal nutrition, lower residue evidence

Cherries Pineapple Mangoes Frozen berries Avocados Blackberries Frozen vegetables Blueberries Sweet corn Carrots Kale Peaches Spinach Cauliflower Cabbage Zucchini Green beans Celery Bell peppers Asparagus Strawberries Kiwi Mushrooms Sweet potatoes Watermelon Potatoes Bananas Apples Onions Cucumbers Tomatoes Pears Broccoli Grapes Romaine

Click any food for its numbers. Ring colour is the organic upgrade verdict; mark size reflects how many conventional samples sit behind the score. Marks that would sit on top of each other are nudged apart by at most a percent or two — never enough to change the order or the quadrant.

Commodities plotted

Fruits and vegetables with usable residue data.

Samples behind the map

50,359

Conventional and organic samples combined.

Above the EPA tolerance

< 1%

Consistent with the program-wide finding that over 99% of samples come in below benchmark.

The four quadrants

The split lines sit at a residue evidence index of 40 and a nutrient-density score of 75, which divides the 36 commodities into four groups of roughly equal size:

Upgrade here first — nutritious food carrying more residue evidence. Leafy greens and berries live here. Keep eating them; this is where an organic dollar buys the most.
Best overall — nutritious and low on residue evidence. Avocados, broccoli, carrots, cabbage. Buy them conventional without a second thought.
Most room to trade up — more residue evidence without a nutrient-density score to match. Worth upgrading or swapping, depending on the price.
Easy conventional — low residue evidence, ordinary nutrition. Nothing to fix here.

The horizontal axis runs backwards on purpose: lower residue evidence is to the right, so the reassuring corner is top-right the way people read a two-by-two. The printed index on each food page still reads the way an index should.

Reading the numbers

The horizontal axis is the relative pesticide residue evidence index, a 0–100 composite of three measured inputs: how often samples contain any detected residue (weight 0.3), how many distinct residues an average sample carries (weight 0.4, topping out at8 residues), and how often a residue comes within 1% of its EPA benchmark (weight 0.3, topping out at80% of samples).

The vertical axis is nutrient density per calorie. Bubble size reflects the number of conventional samples behind the estimate — a large bubble is a well-measured food, a small one deserves more caution. Colour is the organic upgrade priority verdict.

What the shape of the data tells you

The two variables are close to independent. Foods with high residue evidence are not systematically less nutritious, and the lowest-residue foods are not automatically the best choices — sweet corn and watermelon both sit at the bottom of the residue scale and in the lower half of the nutrition scale. That independence is the reason a single "avoid this" list is a bad way to shop: the useful question is where the organic dollar goes, not which foods to drop.

Why this is not a danger ranking

A detection means an instrument found a measurable quantity, often thousands of times below the level the EPA sets as a benchmark. Ranking commodities against each other on evidence is useful for allocating a limited budget. It is not a statement that anything on the right-hand side of this chart is unsafe to eat — and the health cost of eating less produce is well established, while the benefit of avoiding residues at these levels is not.