The Doctor's Kitchen Podcast19 Mar 2025

#289 Pesticides and Whether Organic Is Worth It? with Nick Mole

Is ‘organic’ worth it or just clever marketing? We’ve all been there, standing in the supermarket, holding two identical-looking apples and wondering if the price difference is actually doing anything for our health. And if we want safer food, how do we push for a system where pesticide-free isn’t just for those who can afford organic? Today, I’m asking these big questions to Nick Mole from PAN UK.

We’ll dive into:

What pesticides are and why they’re used?
Whether washing fruit and veg actually removes them
And if organic is worth it and if so, which ingredients are the most important to go organic?

This is a scary topic that goes beyond food, and where you may find a lot of people on the internet making definitive claims about the harms of pesticides and GMO, the honest answer to a lot of these questions is unfortunately … we don’t know.

But from what we do know, I think we can all afford to be more pragmatic, skeptical and aware, particularly when it comes to the “cocktail effect”, as we get into later.

Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) is the only UK charity focused solely on tackling the problems caused by pesticides and promoting safe and sustainable alternatives in agriculture, urban areas, homes and gardens.

Nick joined PAN UK in 2007, having previously worked as a campaigner for the Environmental Investigation Agency. He leads on PAN’s national policy work, undertaking research, analysing data and gathering evidence to support the organisation’s calls to government, regulators, policy-makers, industry and retailers to reduce the impacts of harmful pesticides to both human health and the environment.

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