Feh! In my day, we were fed whole chunks of glass, and we had to chew them in our mouths until they were swallowable size!
I’ve found organic foods to be in general more flavourful and of higher quality but I think in this case, correlation does not equal causation. Organic farmers are more likely to be small, local and passionate as well as being able to charge a price premium. I don’t think it’s the organic process so much as simply caring for their food and getting it to the market faster that makes it taste better.
Several specific organic claims are, in my opinion, spurious. The claim that organic foods are healthier for you because they contain more nutrients has been addressed above. The claim organic is healthier because it contains less pesticides is also very dubious. Bruce Ames has done research showing that 99.99% of pesticides that we commonly consume occur naturally in plants and that there is no convincing evidence that the toxicity of natural pesticides is significantly different from synthetic ones. People assume that natural is good but they forget that lots of things in nature are trying very hard to kill us and the only reason we’re not dead is because we try very hard to stop them from killing us.
edit: Also tangentially tied into but not directly related to the organic foods movement is that “local” foods are better for the environment because they take less fuel to transport. I bothered to crunch the numbers a while back and the surprising conclusion is that due to the vast efficiencies of the global logistics network, it takes less oil to ship something halfway across the world via boat than it does to drive 2 miles to the grocery store.
I eat a lot of raw carrots. I find organically grown carrots sweeter than the alternative. Beyond that, I have no particular opinion towards organic growing, for or against.
I’d love to see those numbers, of course. Would you mind much?