To Go Along With...

my friend Barbara's lastest blogs on organic food I decided to look up some information on the effect of pesticides and hormones in our children's food. From what I've gathered, and please help me out here, the following seem to be the biggies in buying organic:
apples, apple juice, milk, tomatoes and tomato products (ketsup), potatoes, sugar, eggs, pork, chicken and beef.
My big question here is: what about these products that are already put in to a pre-made dinner? As much as I would love to make everything homemade, it's just not a reality.
Advise??

Pesticides and Food:Why Children May be Especially Sensitive to Pesticides
Infants and children may be especially sensitive to health risks posed by pesticides for several reasons:
their internal organs are still developing and maturing,
in relation to their body weight, infants and children eat and drink more than adults, possibly increasing their exposure to pesticides in food and water.
certain behaviors--such as playing on floors or lawns or putting objects in their mouths--increase a child's exposure to pesticides used in homes and yards.
Pesticides may harm a developing child by blocking the absorption of important food nutrients necessary for normal healthy growth. Another way pesticides may cause harm is if a child's excretory system is not fully developed, the body may not fully remove pesticides. Also, there are "critical periods" in human development when exposure to a toxin can permanently alter the way an individual's biological system operates.
For these reasons, and as specifically required under the Food Quality Protection Act (1996) , EPA carefully evaluates children's exposure to pesticide residues in and on foods they most commonly eat, i.e., apples and apple juice, orange juice, potatoes, tomatoes, soybean oil, sugar, eggs, pork, chicken and beef. EPA is also evaluating new and existing pesticides to ensure that they can be used with a reasonable certainty of no harm to adults as well as infants and children

Nationally, acute lymphoblastic leukemia is up 10.7 percent over the past two decades, pediatrician Philip Landrigan said recently at a meeting sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. Brain cancer is up 30 percent. Osteogenic sarcoma -- a type of bone cancer -- has gone up 50 percent, and testicular cancer is up 60 percent in men under 30.
"No one can tell us why this is happening,'' EPA administrator Carol Browner says.
Some evidence points to pesticides.


Children may also be disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of pesticides on their health. A 2004 study of 4,000 schoolchildren in California showed that exposure to pesticides in the first year of life increased the risk of childhood asthma. In this study, pesticides caused disease in children's lungs right alongside other environmental pollutants such as tobacco smoke, soot, and cockroach droppings. Cancer in children may also be related to pesticide exposure: a 2003 study of pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina found that parental exposure to pesticides increased the risk of cancer in their children. And while pesticides have in the past been linked to reproductive problems in men, a 2003 study of boys in Kerala, India, linked exposure to the pesticide endosulfan with delayed sexual maturity. Endosulfan is banned in several countries but is still widely used in the US on strawberries, squash, and pecans.

Can Hormones in Food Harm Kids?
To date, no specific studies have been done on the health effects of hormones in food on children, who can be more vulnerable to substances that don’t harm adults. Because children have relatively low natural levels of the sex hormones in their bodies, some experts believe that even small increases are cause for concern. "The younger you are [when exposed], the greater the risks," says Samuel Epstein, M.D., professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois Medical Center and founder of Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Some experts, such as D. Lindsey Berkson, author of Hormone Deception (Contemporary Books, 2000), worry that hormones in the food supply could be at least partly responsible for early puberty. The average age for a girl’s first period is now between 12.5 to 12.9 for white girls and around 12.2 for black girls, younger than at the turn of the century, though by how much is not known conclusively. However, at this point, a link between hormones and early puberty has not been established by researchers.
What about natural plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens? These substances, found in many foods, such as whole grains, pumpkin, zucchini, carrots, garlic, cabbage and soy, have a mild estrogen-like effect. In the end, though, phytoestrogens aren't nearly as worrisome as the hormones given to animals.
In the face of all that’s unknown about hormones in our food supply, a cautious approach may be warranted. Limiting your child’s intake of hormones from food can be done fairly simply. See Hormones in Our Food: How to Eat Less of Them.