Nicci Micco's Blog

As a nutrition editor, I know the value of eating loads of fruits and vegetables. I prefer to buy local when I can, but I’ve never been a purist about eating only organic. Now that I’m a mom, there are some foods I feel more comfortable about buying organic. Apples are one of these foods. Apples still rank high on the nonprofit Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list of fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide residues. Long-term exposure to pesticides has been associated with cancer, infertility and neurologic conditions, such as Parkinson’s.

I know that pesticides are far more dangerous to children (whose bodies are smaller and whose nervous systems are still developing) than to adults, and for that reason I prefer...

Until a few months ago, I never gave much thought to E. coli. Or salmonella. Sure, I studied these foodborne bugs when I was getting my nutrition degree, but back then I saw them more as organisms that occasionally infect food, not perpetrators that destroy lives and families. And although I took note of the occasional food recalls I heard about in the news, I didn’t much worry about getting sick. That all changed when I edited an article for EatingWell’s September/October issue about all the ways food can make us sick. I became sick—with worry.

While working on the story I read about toddlers who’d eaten spinach or ground beef tainted with E. coli and, days later, were fighting for (and sometimes losing) their lives. Plagued with these mental images, I started to come home from the...