There’s been a lot of debate and discussion over the value of organic foods since they first gained popularity years back. Many experts claim there is no additional health value from organics, though I seriously doubt the demand will decline anytime soon.
But what about taste? I have a friend who swears the organic apples he buys from his local farmers market are better than the ones at the grocery store. I have to admit I’ve never given it much thought; usually only buying organics if it’s on sale or if it looks really really good (or the alternative looks really really bad).
Have any of you noticed any difference? With everything, particular fruits/veggies?
Strawberries and raspberries! Or maybe it’s that I buy them at Fresh Market as opposed to Publix. But YUMMMMMMMMMM.
That does bring up another good point: just plain food quality. Does a small-size farmer produce higher quality produce than one that produces ten-fold as much? We’ve all been to buffets and we’ve all been to high quality restaurants. There’s something to be said about the quality of mass-production.
I’m voting that food quality is the determining factor. Actually, I’d be interested to do a taste test. Sometimes I think it’s a psychological difference in taste 🙂
But I will say, have you noticed organic eggs actually have an orange yolk instead of the yellow grocery store yolk we’re used to?
This is my favorite conversation to have in general. I think it’s not so much the ‘organic’ as the way it’s grown and also, especially with fruits and vegetables, the variety. Both Clark and I come from families where the same tomato (and potato, and everything else) plants have been passed down from house to house and family to family, and because they’re bred to taste good, rather than to pack well in a box or to stay ripe-looking for two weeks, they taste much more incredible and different, even as sauces.
You can see the same thing with meat, too. Heather knows I’m into the beef thing, but a few years in the past we had identical cuts from beef raised on Clark’s farm and beef from the grocery store; we did blind taste tests and everyone could tell the difference.
The whole subject fascinates me, especially since we’ve started a garden and we have tried raising different varieties of the same thing (i.e. sweet corn).
Oh, and on the eggs…it’s not that they are organic, it’s what they eat. One of my dad’s employees has four daughters who, as a 4H project, separated their chickens and fed them different things to see how the yolk colors were affected…the darker yolks came from higher-protein diets.
That’s some great information. Thanks. It’s all about the lovin’.