Good Food on a Tight Budget, EWG's new shopping guide

The Cool Moms (me especially) always check EWG’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database before reviewing a product to make sure the ingredients meet a persnickety mom’s health and safety needs. Now we’re excited to announce that EWG is going further than Skin Deep–straight into our bellies and grocery carts.

If avoiding pesticides and supporting healthy farming practices are important to you, you won’t want to miss this great new resource.

Good Food on a Tight Budget is a free and easy resource for planning healthful, cost-effective meals for your family while avoiding nasty pesticides and artificial ingredients. The Environmental Working Group has compiled tons of research to determine the most nutritious, economical and least polluted foods. You can search by food group, get tips on eating well and buying safely, and even track prices.

The Meal Plan and Shopping list aren’t that impressive–just blank forms–and the PDF of recipes isn’t searchable, which can be frustrating. But the top foods are a great place to start, and their Methodology document (PDF) is worth a look for nutrition geeks, if you’re interested to see the detail with which the top picks were chosen, which foods are most important to buy organic, and which foods you might want be extra sure to avoid. Let’s just say you might want to skip dried apples unless you’re making them yourself, because the pesticide content on apples is extraordinary.

Of course, take some of it with a grain of salt: you’ll find mashed avocado, guava, raspberries and blackberries are not “recommended” because of the cost.

We know many of our readers are already seriously food-savvy, but we thought it was worth mentioning another way to stay on top of the best foods for your family. I’ll warn you now: cupcakes are not on the list. –Delilah

Find out more at the Good Food on a Tight Budget site or join the conversation on Twitter.
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