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Comment by gicadin | Hacker News Reader

Although I agree that buying everything organic is irrational there are certain products where the organic version is quite different. A good example are tomatoes where market bought often taste like plastic. This is my personal taste and opinion but i've validated it in my circle of friends.

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Indeed. My own example is garlic. In the EU today, most garlic sold is from China and presumably grown through standard modern industrial techniques.. It just isn't very good: almost no juice, a strange bitter tang.

But my local supermarket also offers a brand of organic garlic from Spain that is out of this world by comparison. I rave about it to friends. It may seem weird to be this enthusiastic about a minor ingredient, but I find the difference really so huge.

Now, the fact that this garlic was grown through organic farming techniques may be incidental to its quality; maybe it was some other factor that makes the difference. Nonetheless, I will continue buying this organic brand, because when the market only gives me these two options, I am going to prefer the better one.

While a reduced amount of, and possibly different type of, pesticide is often at play in our organic choices, the striking thing we’ve found is that a lot of organic produce tastes better, often times significantly.

Part of it is probably the correlation between organic produce and smaller and/or more local production. Part of it is probably the stores that have extensive organic stock tend to charge more, and presumably are more proactive about disposing of less desirable items.

I feel like part of it is probably a more holistic approach to growing the food, as opposed to trying to maximize yields and/or profit.

The organic milk I've tried is also quite different and better. Usually, that is, like Costco adds fish oil to theirs to get the omega 3 because the milk itself is ultra-pasteurized.

I keep trying all the fancy/expensive organic/free range eggs, I can't tell the difference at all. This is just a comment on taste. It's funny, they kind of look and feel different somehow, but I can't taste any difference. I assume they must be different nutritionally or in some way, and must be better for the chickens, I just hoped they would taste better somehow.

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