Ahhh, organic food. I love the smell of pseudo-science in the morning.....

Not out of broccoli. They can be washed out of most greens but my last head of organic romaine lettuce was crawling with what looked like thousands of small insects. I'd rather just buy the non-organic at that point.

Penn & Teller recently did a show on Organic food on their Bullsh*t program.. blind taste tests (or mislabeled). They labeled half of a banana as organic and the other half as normal, people would claim pieces of the 'organic' banana tasted better.

For me its knowing that I can avoid pesticides etc. Also down here if you shop seasonal and organic you can feed 1 person veggies and fruit and milk for a week for about 20 aussie dollars. Which is great as I HATE buying pre packaged stuff and ending up throwing half of it out because I dont eat it before it goes frot.

There seems to be some misconceptions about what 'organic' is and isn't (it's not all about taste, for instance), and certainly the industry has helped with the confusion.

Here's an example of the difference between organic/non-organic beef. I've chopped it down a bit from a Time story (link below).

The Tale of Two Cattle
ORGANIC (1% of all cattle)

Diet: Grass
That's the normal diet for cattle. Their rumen, a digestive organ, can break down grasses we'd find inedible

Supplements: None
No drugs, no hormones, no additives. That's not ironclad for organic beef � some companies might use antimicrobials � but generally the animals are supplement-free

Environmental Impact: Living with the Land
Cattle move around the land, ensuring that the grass has time to recover between feedings. Grass doesn't need chemical fertilizer to grow and its presence helps prevent soil erosion. There's no need to clean up manure � with low cattle density, the waste just fertilizes the land

Human Impact: The Omega Effect
According to research from the University of California, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids than conventional beef

CONVENTIONAL (99% of all cattle)
The vast majority of all American cattle start off on open ranges, ...and are shifted after a few months to the tight quarters of an industrial feedlot, to be fattened up ...

Diet: Grass and corn
...at the feedlot, they're switched to a heavily corn-based diet, which makes them gain weight faster but also makes them get sick more easily

Supplements: Chemicals
In part to help them survive the crowded conditions of feedlots, where infections can spread fast, conventional cattle are given antibiotics in their feed, and sometimes growth hormones, bloods and fats

Environmental Impact: Waste
A 1,000-head feedlot produces up to 280 tons of manure a week ... All that feed corn requires millions of tons of fertilizer and, ultimately, a lot of petroleum

Human Impact: Fat Attack
Feeding corn to cattle ... doesn't just get them fatter faster; it also changes the quality of the beef. Corn ... can result in beef that is higher in fat � helping to fuel the obesity epidemic

http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...7458-1,00.html

Why would I pay extra for something that, by the definition of "organic", contains Carbon?

Lettuce is not hard to wash properly.... use a small amount of Bleach is a large container of water and after a few minutes all the bugs will go away.... rinse the lettuce in fresh water again (twice) and you will have amazing and organic lettuce..... its well worth it.

The case for Beef is very clear cut... but this above post sums it all up quite nicely... ^ ^ ^

Just spray the vegetables with Raid and shake off dead insects.

Gaucho, being a gaucho and all, what are your thoughts on the taste of corn fed beef? Does it have a distinct flavor for you?

Having mostly corn/grain fed beef up here, I find that grass-fed is distinct. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. Sometimes I like a nice fatty piece of corn-fed beef, and sometimes I like a leaner grass-fed cut.

Your thoughts?

Not Gaucho, but I really like grass-fed beef for steaks, both for texture and flavor. I don't care for it for for burgers, as the texture is IMO off when ground, at least to the level of doneness that I like. It's likely a matter of being leaner - I don't care for ground buffalo, either.

Indeed, you avoid pesticides. You get rat droppings and bugs (live or dead) instead. And I suspect the key word in your money-saving argument is "seasonal" rather than "organic."

Time for me to stop commenting, as to continue would probably verge this thread over to Omni-land.

Well, I suspect the "amazing" part will depend entirely on the grower and not necessarily on the fact that the lettuce is organic. I've had some "amazing" non-organic fruits and veggies that required only a single wash rather than a bleach soak followed by two rinses. Not that I'm entirely opposed to organic, but I'm much more concerned about the flavor of the product and I have not found that organic necessarily means better flavor.

Maybe seasonal is the key word. However to eat season in Tasmania its much easier to go organic. But then again I'm about to embark on a growing my own food adventure again....lets see if the carrots survive this year!

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97-3/10.2.012; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1; en-us) AppleWebKit/525 (KHTML, like Gecko) WicKed/7.1.12344)

the animal dropping argument is just so funny...