“Why are you still peeling all those vegetables?”
Curious what fellow food enthusiasts think and do.
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Someone at my house wants cucumbers, beets , sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips and potatoes peeled.
I think it’s mostly cosmetic for me, with parsnips and carrots. I always peel them.
With delicata squash, no one at my house likes the idea of eating it.
I leave the skin on my tomatoes, eggplants and roasted red peppers.
The mouthfeel of vegetables with peel is different (and at least for us not in a good way). We tend to prefer in many applications, e.g. cucumbers in salads, potatoes for fries and salads, beets (raw and cooked) the peel version
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I peel almost nothing except really gnarly root veggies like celeriac/celery root which is difficult to scrub, even though I buy only organic from my local farm. No one wants a mouthful of soil, even me.
Everything else, I vigorously scrub before using, raw or cooked.
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Really depends on what I am making with said vegetable (or fruit)
Baba Ganoush? Definitely peel.
Roasted eggplant or steamed eggplant? Nope, skin on.
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I didn’t sign up and read the details, but Omoff the top of my head I can’t think of anything I never peel, usually for texture reasons.
If wait; I don’t think I ever peel nectarines. 
And mushrooms. And strawberries. 
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I peel bananas, and peaches because I do not like the fuzz. I also peel kiwi, melons, pineapple, mango, oranges/tangerines/clementines and grapefruit. I don’t peel apples or pears. We don’t eat a lot of fruit, in general - we eat more vegetables.
For vegetables, I will pull strings from thick stalks of celery, and I peel the thick ends of asparagus before I cook them. I peel turnips and rutabagas, celery root and sometimes the thickest brown parts off of a fennel bulb. Sometimes I will peel cucumbers and I peel potatoes sometimes…I like the peel on eggplant. I love the peel on delicata squash, and also zucchini and yellow summer squash.
I peel corn LOL
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I peel:
- winter squashes (or, at least, remove the peel after cooking but before eating)
- bananas
- melons
- kiwi fruit
- turnips/rutabaga
- onions
- garlic
- husks from corn or tomatillos
I’m pretty sure everything else I either wash or, if not delicate, scrub.
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Like the rest of humanity.
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You’re gonna let the oranges go?
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and pineapples and corn?
I’ve never eaten pineapple skin or corn husks and never will.
I find the skirting around pesticides, no mention of the dirty dozen, and so on, bit disingenuous (and dangerous).
Peeling also doesn’t guarantee that you will eliminate pesticides
But does it reduce one’s consumption of them?
…organic produce, but even that needs to be washed and can still harbor natural pesticides or other types of pesticides that have drifted from conventional produce grown nearby.
This is not a ringing endorsement of not peeling, just the disastrous reality that pesticides are… everywhere
A good wash is plenty sufficient to clean produce
But also
At least one cleaning method seems to hold promise in breaking down pesticides: [a soak in a water bath with baking soda]
So which one?
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Do kumquats count?
I eat those skin on
I mean do people even peel kumquats? Probably the same folks who eat pineapples skin on.
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I leave the skin on. Oranges I peel, but I don’t use them all that often, so I forgot to add them to the list!
Yeah, cite some data or something. Definitely contradictory.
The consumer reports article linked is somewhat more helpful, but the fancy graphics for individual fruits and veg are confusing. (A table would have been more useful — but less sexy 
Can you share the Consumer Reports link? I can’t get past the WP paywall.
Here you go
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Thank you!
I’m a little bit surprised by the answers, with most here saying they don’t peel a lot of vegetables. I tend to peel more often than not: potatoes, celery, white asparagus, carrots, they all get peeled. The only vegetables I might leave unpeeled could be an eggplant, cucumber, tomato. Even with things like fennel, leeks and chicory I’ll remove the outer skins.
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