Organic food?

[Clueless Morgan]

Organic meat certainly is tastier. As to veggies, I can't taste any difference. There is an argument that organic farming for produce is essentially a wash in terms of environmental impact with traditional farming since more energy and land must be cultivated to get the same return.

I tend to parse out "organic" in my head differently than I think a lot of people do, or differently than how the items are marketed, anyway.

To me, organic produce are ones that people widely assume don't have pesticides (they do)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scie...riculture/

the actual volume usage of pesticides on organic farms is not recorded by the government. Why the government isn’t keeping watch on organic pesticide and fungicide use is a damn good question, especially considering that many organic pesticides that are also used by conventional farmers are used more intensively than synthetic ones due to their lower levels of effectiveness.

or contain more vitamins or minerals (they don't).
[same article as above]

Just recently, an independent research project in the UK systematically reviewed the 162 articles on organic versus non-organic crops published in peer-reviewed journals between 1958 and 2008 11. These contained a total of 3558 comparisons of content of nutrients and other substances in organically and conventionally produced foods. They found absolutely no evidence for any differences in content of over 15 different nutrients including vitamin C, β-carotene, and calcium. There were some differences, though; conventional crops had higher nitrogen levels, while organic ones had higher phosphorus and acidity – none of which factor in much to nutritional quality.

[snip]

Joseph D. Rosen, emeritus professor of food toxicology at Rutgers, puts it even more strongly. “Any consumers who buy organic food because they believe that it contains more healthful nutrients than conventional food are wasting their money,” he writes in a comprehensive review of organic nutritional claims.

Organic produce, IMHO, is largely marketing bullshit.

So-called "organic" meats and animal products, on the other hand, I'm on the fence about. Free-range, grass-fed, no added hormones and all that may contribute to the tastiness of the final product [I've heard that in blind taste tests people either can't tell the difference or prefer corn-fed beef to grass-fed ], but is that really enough to qualify it as "organic?" Hasn't it been widely understood that looking after the happiness of the animal has a direct influence on the taste of the meat product they eventually become? Do we know whether it's the no hormones and organic feed that's making the meat taste better or the general happiness of the animal since it has access to pastures and mechanized back-scratchers and such?

I'll save my money and buy traditionally farmed produce and preference free-range meat or animal products.