Sure. Are you going to admit that your OP was wholly in error and that those foods are more nutritious? 
As you will note from the other responses to the thread, while there may be champions of organic-as-more-nutritious, that is hardly the mainstream view of them.
Even with nutrition champions out there, the primary argument for them involves the negative effects of using chemicals and antibiotics.
Given that most organic produce comes from the same factory farms as traditional produce, I see no mechanism for it to taste must different.
That doesn’t stop some of my relatives from insisting otherwise.
I know some folks who avoid produce on some “dirty dozen” list. All I remember is that apples are on the list. This list is complete fiction, in that it does not actually quantify the amount of pesticide residue on any produce. I found a study the Journal of Toxicology (DOI 10.1155/2011/589674) that talks about this. It also concludes:
“[ol]
[li]exposures to the most commonly detected pesticides on the twelve commodities pose negligible risks to consumers[/li][li]substitution of organic forms of the twelve commodities for conventional forms does not result in any appreciable reduction of consumer risks, and[/li][li]the methodology used by the environmental advocacy group to rank commodities with respect to pesticide risks lacks scientific credibility[/li][/ol]”
Something not mentioned yet is soil and the long term care of it, something the organic movement stands for. see Rodale and his many writings.
Soils treated with composts, mulches and safe manures tend to grow stronger plants than those grown on just chems and dirt. Plants, being better able to resist disease and insect infestations, will require less pesticides and fungicides.
I agree with others that locally grown produce is superior to that grown and picked early for shipment. No surprise there. I think small farms are able to devote much more attention into their crops as well. Prices are pretty high though as a result, but man…a local stawberry or tomato just is amazing compared to one from Chile Or Mexico. (im in Central Cal)
“Organic” is more than just pesticides - the details are a whole field of expertise on their own but here’s the USDA overview page.
Can you provide more details on this? Do you mean that the USDA is certifying too many or too few farms as organic?
I prefer the “know your farmer” method. If I’m going to buy big business vegetables or meat or dairy or eggs - then the organic/non-organic thing doesn’t make that much difference - since its still possible to trash the environment and use harmful but “natural” pesticides and treat your animals like shit “organically.”
If I care (and I don’t always choose to care), I buy my meat/veggies/dairy/eggs/fruit from a farmer that will let me visit. Or at least from the co-op which tries to do similar responsible sourcing. And it may or may not carry an organic label - that’s less important to me than responsible sourcing.
But I don’t believe that nutrition is a factor. It has to do more with land stewardship.
And I think GMOs are just fine.
Well, it’s been invalidated by blind taste tests.
Organic less tasty and less nutritious. Take that OP: a clear difference!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8340585/Organic-food-less-tasty-than-normal-watchdog-says.html
Nutrition and Food Science Journal: Organic OJ tastes different; organic milk tastes the same. So you need to evaluate on a food by food basis: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/00346650210436262
A couple of comedians feed disguised McDonald’s hamburgers and chicken McNuggets to a bunch of Dutch foodies at an organic food fair. Respondents agree: “It’s definitely a lot tastier than McDonalds, you can just tell this is a lot more pure.” Geekologie
(Blind taste tests trend mean: I once gave my brother the Pepsi challenge with 2 cups of Pepsi.)
Masters paper compares organic v. non-organic orange juice and baby carrots. No significant differences in taste preferences. People seemed to prefer sweeter orange juice though. http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0024517/thomas_d.pdf
The “organic food is more nutritious” meme is just one of a number of reasons people give for paying a premium for it. In my experience it’s not the dominant reason, nor is it a particularly valid one.
*"In 2009, the United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency reviewed 67 studies on this topic and couldn’t find much difference in nutrient quality. In 2012, a larger review of 237 studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine also found that organic food didn’t appear to be any healthier or safer than their conventionally grown counterparts.
But there have long been dissenters who argue that there must be some health benefits to organic. And a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition, led by Carlo Leifert of Newcastle University, has reopened this debate by adding a small twist. Their review of 347 previous studies found that certain organic fruits and vegetables had higher levels of antioxidants than conventionally grown crops.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t prove very much by itself. No one knows if those moderately higher levels of antioxidants actually boost your health. For that to happen, they’d have to be absorbed into your bloodstream and distributed to the right organs — and there just hasn’t been much good research showing that. For now, there’s little evidence to suggest concrete health benefits.
In the meantime, some experts have suggested that this endless health debate has become a distraction. Marion Nestle of New York University argues that the best reasons to buy organic produce is for the environmental impacts and production values. Any nutritional benefit is a “bonus,” if there even is one."*
More recently organic produce is being promoted based on its lack of dem ebil GMOs, part of the “toxin” fears that drive a lot of people.
My take is that environmental concerns make the most sense in embracing organic, though that’s tempered by the reality that you need to have considerably more land in production to match the productivity of conventional agriculture, and converting wild lands to agriculture (even the warm fuzzy kind) is not such a good thing.
I try to use as few pesticides as possible in my garden, lessening potential negative impact on the mini-biosphere in my yard and maybe on myself, though I doubt the latter. I choose not to pay through the nose for organic foods, trying instead to eat more conventionally grown healthy stuff.
Worse yet, the “organic” pesticides are rarely as effective as the conventional ones, and require quite a bit more to be applied to get the same effect, which isn’t thought to be any more environmentally sound or less toxic overall than the regular pesticides. Crap like Rotenone is considered “organic” even though it is highly toxic- probably much more so than say… an equivalent amount of bifenthrin.
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2012/09/24/pesticides-food-fears/
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/06/the_biggest_myth_about_organic_farming.html
And the whole idea that organic food is more nutritious is just idiotic. Plants care about N,P and K, and micronutrients, and don’t distinguish between whether they’re getting them from fertilizer, compost or manure. A tomato of the same variety with optimal levels of organic nutrients, sunlight and water will have the exact same nutrient composition as a tomato grown with conventional fertilizers under the same conditions.
Are there any other massive shifts in the food industry being driven progressive liberal elites? Do you blame them for the death of Twinkies? The rebirth of Twinkies, perhaps?
Ok, but I still maintain that a lot of very attractive red tomatoes taste like plastic and that Red Delicious apples taste like blocks of wood. I personally buy a mix of local organic produce at the farmer’s market and the regular kind at my local supermarket.
I seem to remember that in one of Michale Pollan’s books, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” he made the claim that apples have less iron in them today than they did in the past. I don’t have the book handy, but I believe he had cites to studies that showed declines in nutrients such as calcium, iron, potassium, etc, in various kinds of produce over many years.
I think he was suggesting that the agricultural focus on N, P and K ignored important soil depletion issues that led to produce being less nutritious, and that this may lead to overeating when the consumer gets calories and not micronutrients.
Here is a link to an interview where he makes the claim about apples: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2257391.htm
So, perhaps organic farming methods do produce a more nutritious product.
I still can’t tell if the bearded hippie at the farmer’s market is a Whole Food employee or the Duck Dynasty guy just by looking.
Re: pesticides: I don’t buy it. I’m sorry, but I know what the FDA is and how it works, and I don’t buy into conspiracy theories. If these were real health risks, we’d know, and they wouldn’t be using it on our food supply. This idea that organic farming avoids the “toxic” pesticides is just total bunk. There’s no reason to believe that synthetic pesticides are inherently more harmful than “organic” pesticides - we certainly don’t have the toxicological data to back it up.
Liberal here. Socialist might be a better description.
Our family buys a share in a local farm, which is way less hippie-ish than it sounds. For $250 paid up front, we get a bushel basket of fresh produce every week for 20 weeks. What we get depends entirely on the season–right now it’s a lot of squash and root vegetables–but we also get a dozen eggs each week too and they’re the best eggs I’ve ever had. We assume the risk instead of the farmer, and that’s one less farm at risk of turning into more subdivisions. In general I don’t trust big business to not slowly poison me, the soil and the water while the gov’t does little to stop them. I do realize that’s kind of paranoid but it’s not like it’s never happened…
I put up a small amount of it for the winter. My parents, products of the Depression and WWII, used to grow their own form a massive garden and can/preserve/freeze enough to carry over until the next summer. I have neither the time nor interest in that. But I did learn the ideas of eat cheap, eat well, and avoid depending on megabusiness if you can.
Paranoid? Yes. But also extremely misguided. I also don’t trust big businesses to not poison me. I don’t have to. I don’t take Monsanto’s word for it. I don’t take the FDA’s word for it, either. Rather, what I do is basically the same thing the FDA purportedly does: look at the peer-reviewed scientific papers examining the chemicals in question. Look at what professional ecologists, toxicologists, and biologists have to say about it in the peer-reviewed literature. Keep in mind that without these studies, the chemical in question cannot be approved. These are available to anyone. At no point do you have to trust major corporations or the government. All you have to do is have a decent eye for scientific research. Or you can trust the FDA, which has an extremely good track record of following the research and not bowing to industry pressure.
On a side note…
My dad does this too, along with buying half a pig and a quarter of a cow from the same farm. Overall, it’s really great value. You support the farm directly, get relatively inexpensive produce and meat, and the quality is basically guaranteed as fresh as humanly possible. I have nothing against this, and I think it’s all-around a really good way to do business.
And because it requires more land, and often more labor, has lower yields, etc…its more expensive. Which means organic produce might be “more sustainable” - but it is less than ideal when it comes to feeding the world - where high yield GMO grains that can be “chemicaled” into bumper crops are far more effective in providing the most people the most nutrition at the lowest cost.
Yes, the biggest problem with organics is that if it becomes the norm, then basically the world starves.
“Nearly 100% of organic food in supermarkets comes from a producer owned by one of the major food companies that also sells regular food.” DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9523.2004.00277.x
And the farms I’ve visited are the same industrial monoculture farms as the ones across the street who spray. I have not visited every organic farm in the U.S.
I haven’t thought about whether USDA certifies too many or not enough farms. But going to the organic produce section in your grocery store (and that includes large corporations like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods) isn’t getting you food that was produced in a wildly different manner than the stuff on the other shelves. It may actually have more pesticide residue on it
Much of what the consumer is after can be acquired from local farmers, organic or not. Our self-produced produce is all organic, not due to any philosophical reason. We just can’t be bothered to spray anything. The apples from a nearby orchard are not. But they’re unwaxed and fresh, not last year’s cold-storage. The chicken and eggs are not organic, because their forage is supplemented with non-organic commercial feed. But they’re actual for-real frolicking-in-the-alfalfa-field free-range, unlike much of what you can buy that’s labeled free-range. YMMV.
Are you implying that there is no science to support the view that the use of pesticides carries health risks? Because this would be crazy wrong supposition to make.
I know how FDA and EPA work quite well, in addition to the state protection agencies who end up implementing almost everything the Feds come up with. There’s a ton of shit out there that goes unregulated. Even the regulations addressing the stuff that is regulated are not adequately enforced.
It should also be remembered that we’re bombarded by thousands of potentially toxic substances. When risk assessments are done on the pesticides sprayed on your apples and peaches, they are done in isolation, not with the consideration that you will also be exposed to BPAs in your soup cans, pthalates in your water bottles and cosmetics, PCBs in your tuna fish, flame retardants in your clothing and furniture, and PAHs and VOCs when you go jogging in the afternoon. Or even the residential pesticides that you are exposed to. So keep that in mind when you review risk assessments published by EPA.
The modern environmental science movement started with the discovery that pesticides are dangerous substances with potentially far-reaching effects. And why the hell wouldn’t they be? They are substances designed to maim and kill. You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to recognize something as basic and noncontroversial as this.
As for myself, frugality tends to steer me to the non-organic produce aisle. I do shop at Whole Foods, but more for the delicious gourmet cookies and homemade tortilla chips. However, I do take the time to wash my produce thoroughly (soap and water sometimes, vinegar+water more frequently). Because FDA does not have inspectors standing guard over every tomato or grape. Nor would I attempt to ridicule someone who is worried enough about pesticides to shop organic. Organic foods may carry their own risks, but the consumer should at least have some control over which risks they take on. I don’t think people should necessarily trust that the FDA is always on the up-and-up, because FDA is ultimately a political entity. The science is there, but economic and political realities determine each and every one of its policies. This should make everyone a bit wary. Not conspiracy-minded, but critical-minded.
Organic farming as it is currently practiced, yes. But farming has changed dramatically in the past century. There’s no reason to believe it couldn’t evolve in more dramatic ways.
Personally, I’m intrigued by "http://www.ibtimes. com/indoor-farming-future-takes-root-abandoned-buildings-warehouses-empty-lots-high-rises-1653412 indoor farming. Imagine if everyone in a city was able to get produce grown from one of the local high-rise farms.
*
MOD NOTE: I broke that link due to Broomstick’s report that it brought up a bunch of CC spam pop ups. I couldn’t reproduce it myself but thought I’d put the warning and option here for each to decide.*