Comment by dvh
10 hours ago
I had a college who would meticulously cut that black thing at the bottom of the apple and also quite a bit of actual apple flesh, like 1cm or even more around it. When I asked him why he cut so much, he said that the black thing is remnant of apple flower and when apple tree is in the bloom it is the most sensitive so they apply most pesticides then and the concentration is highest around that black part. By cutting it away with little bit of flesh he removes most of the pesticides that are in the apple. It didn't help, few years later he died of cancer.
Lots of fruit skins are very edible (kiwis etc.), but they are covered with pesticides. All conventional fruits are.
If you look at the "Dirty Dozen" vs. "Clean Fifteen" lists of fruits/veggies that come out every year, you'll notice that the cleanest fruits are almost always ones that grow with a thick skin or covering, or are covered by soil: banana, pineapple, avocado, corn, (shelled) peas, watermelon, carrot, potato, etc.
And the dirtiest ones have a thin or no skin: greens, stone fruit, blackberries, strawberries, apples, pears etc.
The clean fruits aren't really any cleaner, the study just tests the "edible" part minus the outer skin. If you eat the skin of conventional Clean Fifteen, you might as well be eating a Dirty Dozen.