obviously " taste " is subjective ; what is undeniably wrong - or just plain stupid - is that many non-organic crops are treated with a variety of chemicals in order to only enhance their appearance, that is plain madness ; just educate people to accept fruits etc that dont look like shiney plastic imitations of themselves.
I much prefer duck eggs - when you've tasted one, you'll never want to go back to the blandness of hen's eggs.
I come from a farming back ground. I have no doubt free range eggs and organic vegetables taste better and are healthier. The real problem is we cannot be sure of what we are buying as farmers/shopkeepers often sell free range and/or organic when their products are produced in the conventional way.
Possibly. I’d certainly like it to taste better – I’m mildly hippy when it comes to this sort of stuff - but have never been properly convinced that the difference doesn’t simply lie in my head. Except for eggs. If anyone ever has the chance to have their own chickens, I’d highly recommend it. The egg yolk is so spectacularly yellow, almost unearthly in its beauty, and bears practically no resemblance to anything you’ll ever find in a shop. It’s like some specially commissioned Farrow & Ball paint colouring. Sublime. (I’m firmly heterosexual, despite all appearances to the contrary.) You mean Gillian McThief? She was incontrovertibly skewered by Ben Goldacre and this was probably my favourite part of the book. I loved seeing her torn to shreds. Loved it. I've got your back on this one, Ciaran. Quite.
Out of interest, on what basis have you come to this conclusion? If you'd said something like a corn-fed "freedom food" chicken tastes better than a mass-produced tesco-value chicken, then I'd agree but that's nowt to do with being "organic" or otherwise.
I buy Organic veg and it not only does it look better, it tastes better. Maybe i'm being scammed but my taste buds can tell the difference.
Back to book recommendations. Psycho another book which will every so slightly more break your brain is 'Priceless' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priceless-The-Hidden-Psychology-Value/dp/1851687823 - it lead to another Victor Meldrew moment of me wandering around Currys picking up the remote controls for the cheaper tvs and fixing their 'contrast' settings to the same settings as the expensive TVs (yeah that's right the Currys staff deliberately make the picture quality look worse on the cheaper tv models vs the more the expensive models sitting right beside them) - it's also lead to many's a debate with Indian telephonists trying to sell me insurance on stupid ****, like my 1 year old DVD player which warranty had just expired: Indian: "So, sir, this insurance is a really good deal...." Me: "If it's a good deal why are you phoning me from India, will all the overheads incurred on your side, to try sell this to me - if it's such a good deal why aren't you hoarding this deal for yourself and your family and your future grand children, if this benefits me in any way as a gamble why are you trying to lay the other side of the gamble?" Indian: "You just had to say 'no' sir... **hangs up**" ST last night I remembered a very decent book on the whole food industry which I'm not sure if you've read, although it's title sounds a little bit alarmist it's more sense than scaremongering http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-End-Food-Paul-Roberts/dp/0747588813 It raises many of the points that you brought up about the unsustainable nature of the current farming situation, but also goes into how the current western system is turning basic nutrition into marketable products, while trying to add extra 'value' to these products by all sorts of preparations, already cut onions, sliced cooked frozen chicken breast etc
Sweet Jesus. I can tell from a glance at the reviews and your Curry’s revelation that this book might tip me over the edge. Good stuff. It’s magic being synthetically (or even genuinely) outraged. I’ve never heard of the book before, which is galling and makes me feel less of a man, but I’ll look out for it in (predominantly second-hand) bookshops - I’m generally in bookshops every week - and if I don’t have any luck there, I’ll order myself one from Amazon. Thanks. If my heart holds out, I’ll report back once I’ve read it. (Don’t get me started on Indian call centres. That way lies Daily Mailesque trouble.) I think that book you recommended to ST was maybe written by the same guy who wrote The End of Oil? I wouldn’t exactly recommend that you pay your own money for The End of Oil, but if you ever chance across a free copy (you might steal it from a distracted friend, say) you’ll maybe find it’s worth a whirl. I quite enjoyed it. The End of Food, The End of Oil.....The End of Faith? I have a strange feeling that I once saw you say somewhere that you’d read this book (Sam Harris)? If so, this makes me feel that you’ll probably also have read God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens) and The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins). How about The Net Delusion, then? Maybe you've not read that? The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom .....At the start of the twenty-first century we were promised that the internet would liberate the world. We would come together as never before, and from Iran's "Twitter revolution" to Facebook "activism", technological innovation would spread democracy to oppressed people's everywhere. We couldn't have been more wrong...... Yes, okay, but I quite liked it. An easy enough read. Failing that, read The Tyranny of Email: The Four-Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox. If, like me, you feel that the internet has maybe made people less able to concentrate and think seriously, more agitated and distracted, less socially capable, less caring.....well, you'll probably like this book. Another very easy read, even though it slightly fails to deliver on its promise. Enough already. Edit: the links, for those (understandably) too lazy to search: The Net Delusion The End of Faith God Is Not Great The God Delusion The Tyranny of E-Mail
I'll definitely do 'The End Of Faith' - I think both Dawkins and Hitchens reference Harris a few times in their own attempts on the subject and I've been meaning to read it. I need to refresh my head on the subject as well, too many times I've entered debates with religious types knowing that I have a huge arsenal of material somewhere in the back of brain, yet I just can't manage to hoke it out at the right point. I'll assume you've read Hitchens' memoirs? It's interesting to survey his progressive lurch from the left to the right, abandoning early idealism for a type of pragmatism (sure we didn't have a rock solid single excuse to enter Iraq, but Saddam was a huge asshole) - something I've noticed in myself as I'm getting older. He was a great writer as well, I much preferred his attempt at debunking faith over Dawkins (who as an author doesn't always manage to give me that little bit of entertainment needed to maintain my interest, even if he produces the most comprehensive arguments - his older stuff in particular can be unreadable in bed, just keep falling asleep.) In terms of the net decreasing our attention span the missus is convinced I've got issues. I don't really do tv these days, unless it's live sports, a top quality HBO style show or a documentary on physics or astronomy (which are almost impossible to get on television these days, the documentary channels are far too heavy on the reality tv shows repackaged as something educational - bittorrent is your new best friend for documentaries). So yes tv is a bit of a background noise for me, the new radio - my laptop is permanently in my lap while she is watching Holyoaks and she's not shy to let me know. My brain has to be doing something which requires thought, interaction or achieves something, play the Xbox with the kids, work on not606 (or more likely engage in pointless mind numbing arguments), keep an eye on the business we're taking in work, read books which make me a cynical bastard towards everything - it's another form of entertainment to me, always being wired into something, and to be honest I'm not sure if it's a negative - I get a lot of stuff done in my free time. Anyway I've just bought The Net Delusion and The End of Faith (bah, no kindle versions, but the used versions were only like 4 quid delivered) as I'm running a bit low on material - I'll let you know what I think.
Hippy ****, it produces lower yields and higher prices. Many people have poor diets because of the price of fresh produce and the self-rightest idealists are exasperation the problem!
It produces lower yields and higher prices because of lack of demand. If more people bought organic food, prices would come down and yields would increase. Simple agricultural economics.
I'm going to concede this one since I don't actually have much egg tasting experience, I'm not really a huge fan of eggs. But still the M&S 'We only sell products containing free range eggs' does piss me off, I want the delinquent 'I don't give a ****' option.
Free range doesn't mean well treated and proper fed, just bigger cage. So your objection to M&S's moral claim gets my approval.
You ever went to fry one of your eggs and it's a chicken foetus in it? Happened to one of my pals Don't think he's eaten egg since.
We tend to buy Organically when possible, though the milk turns quicker than Danny Monterbitch aka the big baldy Swede
