You remember that big anti-organic food study last week? Guess who funded it.

[cyborg_jim]

43. If you don't want to eat chemicals

Don't eat - everything is composed of chemicals and there's plenty of natural stuff out there that will kill you much deader than any pesticide: many fungi, berries etc...

If you don't want to eat foods that have been genetically manipulated then that rules out basically everything farmed since it's been manipulated for our benefit by artificial selection. Bananas probably being the best example of taking something basically inedible in its wild form and farming it for human consumption.

There is no reason to suppose that it "has" to be more healthy - it is merely trendy to act as if a particular Disnified sense of nature is inherently better for us without actually stepping back and understanding what nature is.

In short if you want an idea of what is "natural" go live in the Australian outback and subsist on roots and grubs.

And as for taste a lot of that is inherently subjective - you could only know for certain by making a carefully controlled experiment that removes other factors like the positive response to the Organic brand.

Oh and yes, it is a brand, not a thing. What "Organic" means seems to be whatever sounds good to affluent middle classes - not based on anything in particular.