Rodale.com's "The Daily Fix," an Essential Newsletter

One of the many daily newsletters I receive via email is "The Daily Fix" from Rodale.com. It's full of practical information about living a cleaner life, including tips on staying healthy, food shopping, cooking, household cleaning, personal health care products and the general avoidance of the chemicals that interfere with our well-being.

Recent stories include "5 Kitchen Cures for Cold & Flu Season," "The Nickel Pincher: Cheap and Easy Homemade Cereal" and "7 Toxins That Could Kill Your Workouts."

Another story, "7 Foods You Should Never Eat," touches upon several foods discussed regularly here—canned tomatoes, corn-fed beef, farmed salmon, non-organic apples and potatoes—and offers the problems, solutions and budget tips.

It'll take less than two minutes to read (money back if it doesn't!) and should get us all thinking about our shopping decisions. Here's the entry on nonorganic potatoes:

Nonorganic Potatoes

Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board, gives us the scoop:

The problem: Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes—the nation's most popular vegetable—they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. "Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals."

The solution: Buy organic potatoes. Washing isn't good enough if you're trying to remove chemicals that have been absorbed into the flesh.

Budget tip: Organic potatoes are only $1 to $2 a pound, slightly more expensive than conventional spuds.

"The Daily Fix" is free; simply enter your email address in the "free daily newsletter" box in the upper right corner of any of the Rodale pages I've linked to above.