Organic Food is Healthier: Bullshit.

Both. Very much less sustainable using modern methods, since it ruins the topsoil and depends on the finite resource of petroleum. Organic farming is sustainable, but to support the present population, would require more intensive land and labor use. Our population will probably be reduced in the future, in keeping with the ability of the land to support us.

But according to your link:

While conventionally grown cereal, fruit and vegetables tend to exceed pesticide limits more frequently than organic food,...

I doubt it. Most of the best farmland is already in use. The appropriate (sustainable) technology results in decreased yields...

 

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Apparently, the possibility that food bought from local farmers who do not inundate the local environment with various hazardous chemicals might not be more nutritious, but merely wiser and better for other reasons, make some people angry - as if they were being cheated. ?

I wouldn't, because the soil and micronutrient base (selenium, etc) is much different in a good organic operation.

No, it doesn't. You should pay some attention to which pesticides and herbicides (the omission of herbicides is a warning flag, usually means bs is being promulgated) are permitted, and what uses of them - it's a very short list, and the circumstances constrained.

So there are clear benefits expected from a diet in which exposure to that stuff is intermittant and sparse, rather than every day and steady.

Your washing will do you little good if the producer contamination has been applied intensively during growth, in the water or fertilizer supply, and incorporated into the food. Another benefit from organic stuff - the contamination is often windblown and otherwise sporadic, from outside the producer's control, and easier to wash off.

Meanwhile, your faith in the regulation and monitoring of pesticide and herbicide application is not based on field observation, or investigations over the past few decades.

I pity people who buy tomatoes from supermarkets, in season.They are wasting their money - the difference is dramatic, and there's almost always a garden or farm source within reach.

Organic and other more sustainable farming often produces higher yields per acre, all else being equal and on average. That is especially true in years of bad weather, economic depression, etc. For example: The Amish are not going broke in droves, and their fields often match the conventional in yield - and outdo them in efficiency.

The USDA is not the final authority here, especially after eight years of W&Co. The "definition" of organic has been a political catfight over the past few years, and the actual organic folks lost many battles. That does not affect the real issues here.

I have. The biggest differences are in local and garden vs chain supermarket - but there are noticeable differences in merely organic for some foods, such as milk, meat, and eggs. In other foods the difference can even favor the "conventional" - coffee, cheese, wine - but other factors apply, and I still buy organic or other politically correct whenever it seems reasonable.

One point: my farmer buys are often less expensive than equivalent supermarket stuff - so any prestige from price would work against the "organic".

Not to despair - there are many advances and improvements available to the "organic" farmer, and more to come. The focus of modern research has been on the agenda of agribusiness, but that can change. For example, the researchers at the U of Minnesota think that conventional straight breeding or modified GM techniques (which are not all evil) could easily match the results of the hybrid research in corn and soybeans. The focus on hybrids is for corporations who wish to hold effectively enforceable patents on seeds. That can change.

General point: in all studies comapring "organic" with "conventional", if great care has not been taken to verify the "organic" nature of the actual study food the results are suspect. There is at least twice as much "organic" produce sold as is available from the total production of certified organic farmers. The higher prices involved are a great temptation.

Whenever possible, know your farmer

 

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A little info. . .

The future of food . . . .
http://www.hulu.com/playerembed.swf?referrer=http%3a%2f%2ftwobs.com%2fboard%2findex.php%3ftopic%3d2453.0&eid=cMzvfJo5t_uBnghXU4JgkQ

 

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To me they task like plastic. Not entirely, they also have a tomato flavor and are less resistant. Get a locally produced organic tomato, one that feels fairly tight skinned but you can tell by looking at the batch the farmer did not choose his or her seeds for the look of the tomato. Odds are they went with something they thought had a rich taste.

THEN try a mass produced non-organic. I think you will find your own non-flattering similie for the latter tomato. Mine is plastic, his was cardboard. Yours will probably be something also non-flattering.

We get used to crap and so our spectrum of value judgments reflect this.

 

Ok I'll take your word at this.

Sure, but the levels are set so low that it's not clear that this matters. If you don't believe me, look into it for yourself---I spent a lot more time than I should have today reading toxicology reports for various pesticides.

 

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Not the claim.

This is not clear from the evidence that I've looked at today. Most of the tolerances are set ridiculously low, below the ``detectable'' levels.

Your washing will do you little good if the producer contamination has been applied intensively during growth, in the water or fertilizer supply, and incorporated into the food. Another benefit from organic stuff - the contamination is often windblown and otherwise sporadic, from outside the producer's control, and easier to wash off.

Source?

I will actually agree with you here. When I lived in Palo Alto, I found that spinach at the Farmer's Market was cheaper than at the grocery store. This was the one exception.

 

I agree 100%. Even the truss tomatoes taste like cardboard - to me anyway. I'm not even saying that have to be organic. I ate some field sun ripened tomatoes that looked pretty crap, smelled good, that tasted perfect. And they were a pretty decent sized tomato to.

Japan has some really great fresh food. Japanese, at least the older ones, are extremely picky about flavor. They (as many Asians do) see food kind of like medicine.

 

I had tomatoes grown in my mothers garden and store bought tomatoes and I have no fucking clue what your talking about, they tasted the same!

 

According to what you have posted here, which I assume you looked at, contamination by pesticides, including at least one known to be carcinogenic in very low laboratory doses, is much lower and more sparse (1%) in "organic" produce.

I think you will find numerous and serious researchers who think those levels are not "ridiculously low", btw, and given the US standard slipshod enforcement and monitoring, the exact level permitted in the products of conventional agribusiness is not the key factor anyway.

Meanwhile, I again draw your attention to the lack of mention of herbicides in your cited stuff - one of the red flags of a bad source, in this arena of discussion.

Oh, a couple of decades of following the matter: but a quick Google drops this, for the Amish, and it's typical: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-120461906.html

and a comparison of these two {http://www.gosoy.ca/rr_performance.php
http://www.kansasruralcenter.org/publications/Organic cropping.pdf }shows an actual working organic farm in Kansas (farm B) matching test run lab fields of conventional soybean farming in Ontario (around 40 bu/acre).

The organics in that link matched conventional in sweet corn yield as well. Just anecdotal, of course.

A lot of it is. If you follow this stuff you can't help but notice the stories like that Bozeman test fields of organic winter wheat that yielded >100 bu/acre, getting up there with the conventional (conventional yields around 120 in good circumstances) for unknown reasons - the researchers themselves don't know what happened.

Which brings up another repeated point: the huge investment in research dollars and effort that has been devoted to the agenda of agribusiness has no equivalent in the "organic" world. Because of this corporate slant, the world of "organic" farming has been ghettoed - on one side bound in a variety of haphazardly derived standards and customs, some of which are woo woo and some of which are deadly serious; on another side constantly compared, economically, with agribusiness practices inadequately monitored or evaluated and extravagantly subsidized in both research and marketing.

So it's always possible to find some woo woo aspect of organics, and compare it with some great advance taken out of context in conventional. That doesn't speak to the issues involved.

 

You may be lucky if your store's tomatoes are a pretty good variety. Or it may be you are growing a tastless variety and simple never tasted a decent tomatoe?

About 30 years ago there was a big push by tomato growers to get product that could last long on the shelf and look good. Flavor was not selected for. The first people that started bitching about tasteless tomatoes were Italians. Which makes sense I suppose. Then they had a phase where they went back to old stock tomatoes and inserted a fish gene for antifreeze making one of the first GMO tomatoes. Then they made these other GMO tomatoes that tasted absolutely great but where fraking hard as hell. Like a rock hard. These were liked by chiefs, actually, for cooking in stew. But no way you'd want to eat one raw.

Yeah, the tomato has had a history of sorts.

So, either you are lucky, or you never ate a decent tomato?

 

Or it could be that you just imagined the tomatoes you worked so hard on tasted so good?

 

Very fresh food is healthier, and tastes incredibly better.

The difference in flavour between a carrot or potato that is cooked within an hour of being harvested, and one from a shop, is immense.

They do a lot of tests to see if someone can taste the difference between shop organic vegetables and shop farm vegetables. It's borderline.

Try the same with freshly gathered and shop stuff.
No contest,

 

I would like to see the taste test before assuming such things.

 

According to this link (Is Organic Food Better For You?), one reason of why sometimes people report that organics foods have more flavor, is because organic foods are fresh, and fresh food just tastes better. Organic farms tend to be smaller operations, they often sell their products closer to the point of harvest.

I personally don't limit my foods on organic foods, in fact I rarely buy organic foods because non organic foods (which are considerably cheaper) work just fine for me.

 

I'm sure the logic sounds solid but has it actually been proven? Is there a large scale blind taste test.

 

I've had the tomatoes from our garden, a long time ago, but I didn't personally do the work on them. Anyway, I've heard many other people say tomatoes taste like cardboard.

6 experts say why tomatoes taste like rubbish here


Brett Clement, managing editor of Tomato Magazine: The longer a tomato stays on the vine, the higher its sugar levels and the better it tastes. But "tomatoes that are too ripe present difficulties for the food-service industry," "Slice into them and all the seeds and juice fall out."

here's something interesting:
When I was invited to judge an heirloom tomato contest last summer, I knew heirloom tomatoes were old varieties, but how old? And what else was different about them? Answers came from Lawrence Davis-Hollander of the Eastern Native Seeds Conservancy in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. "Roughly speaking, heirlooms are at least fifty years old or have been in a family for at least two generations," he explained.


And yes MAYBE it is ME!
"It's You"

We also spoke with Ed Beckman, president of the California Tomato Commission. Another problem, he said, is that people's tastes differ with locale, personal experience, and ethnicity. Southwesterners, for example, like acidic tomatoes, while people who grow their own tomatoes lean towards the sweeter varieties. Hispanics, meanwhile, tend to prefer pink, firm tomatoes.

No matter how many varieties you try, however, you might never find that perfect tomato from your youth, says Winters. "You can't compete with a memory," she told us. "For some people, the tomatoes they ate as children will always taste better—no matter what.

 

IT is healthy,
my mom specialy buys whole wheat bread

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You can also imagine how the bio engineering is gone
so, natural is better
do you want to eat chemicals in your food?

 

I hope that is sarcasm zaindapain. If not then to I have a harmful chemical for you to fight against: http://www.dhmo.org/