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I want to buy organic as much as possible, but...it's not possible to do it for everything. My mother gave me 20 bucks to buy myself groceries for the week. This is mainly just for lunches. Some things I want to get are whole wheat pasta, veggies, fruits, nuts, grains. I thought I could make myself a pasta salad enough to bring for lunch 2-3 days of the week. Maybe I could buy some whole wheat pita bread and make lil pizzas. I plan on getting hummus and bringing veggies to dip. I want to make my meals meatless but filling and healthy but not necessarily low fat.

So basically what are the most important products to go organic and what doesn't make as big of a difference. And should I even bother... Because supper is never organic in any aspect. From a health aspect, is it worth going organic just some of the time.

This is the list I've seen most often about pesticide amounts in produce:

Foods with the most pesticides:
* Peaches
* Apples
* Sweet bell peppers
* Celery
* Nectarines
* Strawberries
* Cherries
* Pears
* Imported grapes
* Spinach
* Lettuce
* Potatoes

The foods with the least pesticide residues were:

* Avocados
* Frozen sweet corn
* Pineapples
* Mangos
* Asparagus
* Frozen peas
* Bananas
* Cabbage
* Broccoli
* Papayas

So if you want foods from the top list, I'd go with organic, but to cut down on cost get as many of the bottom list as you can work into meals whee

A lot of organic pastas that I've found are the same price as the regular whole wheat pasta (which, by themselves, tend to be a bit more expensive), so that would be worth it. Nuts are gonna kill your budget even if you don't go for organic, because anything besides peanuts are crazy expensive stressed

The rule I was told to follow when you have to pick and choose is with produce foods with thin skins or skins you eat you should get organic, the ones with thick skins you don't eat like bananas are safer to get nonorganic. And you're right about meat and dairy, especially butter.

I make simple lunches, like humus and avocado on a bagel. ^_^ It's not very expensive at all.

Oh you know what else is nice to plant for easy munching?

Snap peas. You plant them and within 2-3 weeks they're already flowering and producing fruit. You can eat them while they're still thin and new, or you can wait until they get round and snap them open for the round yummy goodness and give the outer shells to your other plants, they decompose quickly and without the mushy mess.

The only thing that may be a mess is that that they're a vine so you'll have to get a trellis with thin wire or wood, or let it crawl over an old crate. The white flowers are nice. And they last for a long time, the seeds are like .99 cents and the amount of seed I got for this years crop was a jelly jar full ^^u yum.

I like making simple lunches too! I usually eat a rice cake topped with ham and cheese. It's really delicious, and healthy too. smile