
A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes - ust
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/science/better-tasting-tomatoes-genes.html
======
Eric_WVGG
There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in
the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like _corn_ , which seems to be a difficult
concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time
that microwave popcorn became popular.

People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or
remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat flavorless,
unseasonal ones.

pro tip: Use canned tomatoes instead of fresh whenever out of season; canners
use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping, and seal at the peak of
freshness.

~~~
tornadoboy55
Pro tip: never eat canned goods. The coating inside of them is loaded with
endocrine disruptors.

Edit: nice to see downvotes without any discourse. Keep it up HN!

[https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/](https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/)

~~~
abrookewood
Do you have anything showing that these are used in canned foods?

~~~
tornadoboy55
... are you seriously too lazy to do ctrl+t->'canned food endocrine
disruptors'->enter ?

And don't use the argument that the onus is on me for giving more links. If
googling it is too much effort for you, how can you expect me to do it for
you..?

~~~
abrookewood
I only asked because you listed research listing the problems with endocrine
disruptors, but nothing showing they were used in cans.

------
zZsFBVZ9bjdJd
Temple Grandin had some interesting thoughts on how single trait breeding can
lead to adverse affects in her discussion on "Rapist Roosters", and how this
relates to software[0]. It seems like this is also happening here.

Typically when single trait breeding leads to an adverse, undesirable affect
(lack of taste), while the selected trait was obtained (in this case, possibly
bigger size) breeders don't start from scratch by trying to isolate the
desired trait without obtaining the undesirable trait. Instead, as in
software, the breeders iterate by trying to remove the negative trait,
complicating the hybrids and possibly more unknown adverse traits. It seems
like it might be wise to start from scratch in some cases and keep it simple,
rather then make hybrid species whose lineage can be difficult to trace.

[0]:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=aMVmhqpILOAC&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=aMVmhqpILOAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)
page 70

~~~
gmarx
That explains why most every dog breed that competes on looks and becomes
popular gets messed up. Also American breeders have this odd habit of taking
large dogs that should be about 80 lbs and breeding them into behemoths,
usually to the detriment of the dogs

~~~
appleiigs
You are being too nice calling it a habit. Breeding behemoths is what sells.
People will pay a premium for the pick of the litter (which is code words for
"the biggest"). I don't have any problems with dog breeding per se, but the
market forces are seriously broken.

EDIT: In addition to pushing for bigger dogs, it's also profitable to drive
down food and vet costs. Kennel clubs like the American Kennel Club are scams.
The kennel clubs just receive fees for processing paper. They don't inspect
breeders. They don't care if you're a puppy mill. As long as you pay your
fees, you will get your papers.

~~~
gmarx
the puppy mill thing is disgusting. I also knew a pathologist who clued me in
on the fact that a lot of the breed characteristics are considered diseases in
humans, e.g. the achondroplasia of dachsands and basset hounds.

My thinking- you should breed for performance, health and temperament.

------
shmerl
_> I don’t want people to not eat a great-tasting tomato because they’re
scared of it_

And we also don't want anyone to claim exclusive rights on producing such
tomatoes, because some moron came up with the idea to patent genes.

~~~
rch
Exactly, and there are plenty of existing varieties that taste as they should.
The random colors and shapes are part of the fun.

I'd much rather have one heirloom than 4 _identical_ red tomatoes still on a
vine sold in a plastic box.

~~~
foxhop
A heirloom has nothing to do with it, that just means its seeds create fruit
true to the parent fruit.

I have taken some really tasty hybrids and grew them back down into a heirloom
of sorts. I've started to grow tomatoes 5 years ago.
[http://unturf2.tumblr.com](http://unturf2.tumblr.com)

That said, yeah we don't need to engineer the flavor back into tomatoes, we
need people to vote with their wallets.

------
corybrown
> In the tasting panels, there were noticeable differences in preferences:
> between men and women, between foodies and nonfoodies, and, perhaps most
> interesting, between older people and younger people. He recalled one of the
> students working in his laboratory picking out the supermarket tomato as her
> favorite in one of the taste tests.

People like what they know. But I'm guessing repeated exposure could end up
shifting the tastes.

~~~
dkonofalski
Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very objective way to test this kind of thing.
We know, based on all kinds of testing done in the past, that our tastebuds
react more sensitively to tastes that we don't know to protect us from
potentially eating foods that are poisonous or rotten. It's the reason why you
have to develop a taste for things like bleu cheese and cilantro and why they
taste bitter or strong at first. We're "programmed" to like foods that we've
tasted before and are used to and that we know are safe to eat. When you
introduce a flavor for something that we "know" what it's supposed to taste
like, we naturally are averse to that taste. It's the same reason that people
develop taste aversions to foods that they've gotten sick from or why people
can't drink a liquor that they've had a terrible experience with. Your
tastebuds "recognize" that this taste or flavor got you sick last time and
prepare your body for it.

~~~
akiselev
Do you have any citations? This all sounds so obvious and logical but so do
most other theories in evolutionary psychology and biology. I don't think we
have enough evidence to make such strong claims.

I developed a taste for spicy food after years of avoiding it like the plague
for digestive reasons but only found out after I had a strong craving for
Indian food and accidentally got something really spicy. I also can't bring
myself to order tortas because I ate one too soon after getting really sick
from tacos. Reading the word "tortas" makes me feel nauseous but "tacos" does
not and I can eat both without any negative response (once the food is in
front of me). These examples are orthogonal to yours but I think they're
illustrative of just how complex the interactions are. I don't doubt the
adaptations you mentioned are there, just how prelevant they are in a modern
agricultural society.

~~~
dkonofalski
Wikipedia actually has a fairly good overview of the idea:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion)

You can find more info on Google Scholar for specific studies and papers.

------
tetraodonpuffer
amazing tasting tomatoes still exist around the world, if you are on vacation
in Italy in the summer buy some "cuor di bue" tomatoes at the supermarket and
they will be amazing.

Of course if you happen to know somebody that grows them and you can pick them
off the plant they will be even more incredible, but even the "normal"
supermarket ones are going to be orders of magnitude tastier than anything you
can find in North America in my experience.

The issue is of course that said tomatoes are available only for a short
period of time, so if you are having a craving for them in December, you are
out of luck, but that's the way it's always been, the summer ones are just as
tasty now as they've always been so there's no need to put taste "back" into
them.

~~~
oppositelock
Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a
hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are
seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself,
you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl
variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes,
which are F1 hybrids, so the next generation is really terrible.

I've been growing them for years, even when I was living in apartments with no
garden space at all. For really tight space, something like an EarthBox works
great - you get very high plant density. I had one of those on a balcony
barely bigger than the box itself, and I still had a few fresh tomatoes every
week!

Here in the SF bay area, you can sprout the seeds in late Feb, early March,
and you've got edible tomatoes by mid may, all the way through October. I'm
pretty sure I can build a cheap glass house and have them year round, now that
I have back yard.

~~~
koliber
You mention that there are plenty of heirloom tomatoes that area easy to grow.
Two sentences later you say that you can't replant the seeds because they are
F1 hybrids.

I think a clarification is in order. The general consensus is that if a tomato
is an heirloom it is not a hybrid, and vice versa.

I have had excellent luck with growing plants from collected seeds for any of
the heirloom tomatoes I've grown. With hybrids, your mileage may vary.

That being said, I find heirloom tomatoes to be a lot more finicky to grow.
Various species are sensitive to diseases. Excessive rain increases chances of
diseases, and therefore, a green house or at least rain cover helps out.

That being said, I encourage anyone to try growing their own tomatoes. You
will get fruit! It's hugely satisfying. Once you eat a good tomato, it feels
like you are in on a secret most people don't know about.

~~~
oppositelock
Sorry, I plant both. I can plant harvested heirloom seeds (but find it more
convenient to buy them). The Early Girl tomatoes, whose flavor I really like
that I mentioned are hybrids which don't re-plant well.

I agree, that heirlooms are more difficult to keep happy - they're just more
sensitive to "stuff".

------
samirillian
Tomatoes are practically weeds. They grow like crazy, and you can eat
heirlooms as sweet or as savory as you like.

Sometimes I think I didn't know wealth until I had a cherokee purple straight
off the vine. You can practically make sashimi with it.

Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It only
takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out very
poorly. (dangers of monocropping; turning plants into intellectual property,
whatever the hell happened to pugs, etc.)

Just know how surprisingly easy it is to grow your own--and do! That's all I'm
saying.

~~~
tstactplsignore
>dangers of monocropping

Nothing to do with biotechnology or genome editing. In fact both technologies
can and will be used to make crops more diverse.

>turning plants into intellectual property

There are specific plant breeds that are already closely guarded IP. Not to
mention, this is like being against software because software patents exist.

>whatever the hell happened to pugs

Selective breeding? That's what is responsible for every vegetable you have
ever eaten, ever, without exception.

>Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It
only takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out
very poorly

"Fucking with genes" is what enabled the agricultural revolution, the green
revolution, and is responsible for all of the food we eat today. Now we have
the biotechnology and understanding to edit genes in ways that are inherently
safer, more targeted, and less random. Are you not concerned that your
conclusion (biotechnology is too scary to ever use) is not held by the
overwhelminh majority of plant scientists and geneticists? Is there anything
you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-
biotechnology?

~~~
samirillian
> Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not
> being anti-biotechnology.

Sure. I'm not strongly anti-biotechnology.

On reflection, the two points that really bother me.

a) genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from
bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping
tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of season."
They're always fixes that allow the consumer to remain as passive as possible.

b) I've never hear a single scientist make a good argument against GMOs. What,
like you can't come up with a single possible downside? I think what finally
convinced me to vote for Hillary was seeing the best arguments against her, by
people who really hated her guts (like, really, the worst you have are dark
insinuations?) I want to hear someone creative/knowledgeable come up with
their best argument against GMOs. Like, they got hired to find the worst case
scenarios. I just feel like I've never heard that argument articulated well.

Anyway, there are two possibilities: a) this issue is so amazingly stupid that
no informed person would ever be bothered by these practices. b) there are
real--if unlikely--toxic externalities to genetic modification, but no
informed person wants to share them because they don't want to feed the fire
of ignorance.

And, yeah, the dismissive tone of scientists I've talked to, coupled with
their apparent ignorance, has not reassured me that this conversation is being
had in good faith.

~~~
KingMob
The best argument against GMOs are Black Swans, which, due to their rarity,
don't appear often/soon enough to dissuade people in advance. Probably
99.99999% of GMOs are fine, but that one in a million will have disastrous
consequences for an ecosystem. It could also be that since our knowledge of
human biology is still woefully incomplete, we optimize for the wrong things,
leading to lower overall health (we've probably already done this without GMOs
just by selecting for size/sturdiness over nutrients.) Multiply the complexity
of individual organisms with entire ecosystems, and the reality is we just
can't predict the likelihood of an adverse outcome at all.

This would be fine if we had a backup Earth. I'm all in favor of biotech on
Mars, isolated moon labs, and interstellar colonies, if we had any. But the
current irreplaceable nature of Earth means we have to be __extra __cautious
with it. Our usual standards are insufficient, and thinking otherwise is
hubris.

~~~
tstactplsignore
>Probably 99.99999% of GMOs are fine, but that one in a million will have
disastrous consequences for an ecosystem.

This really doesn't make any biological sense and kind of goes against all of
our understanding of evolution and ecology. Can you describe this theoretical
situation in any kind of detail? I find it completely incoherent and
unimaginable.

GMOs have a huge advantage over traditional methods of crop development
_because_ they can be engineered to be safer: they can be designed to not
survive off of human farms, and not reproduce with wild plants, or have other
safety measures.

The idea that we can create a single organism that could cause an ecological
catastrophe (bigger than any of the ecological harm caused by simply moving
around invasive _natural_ species) is science fiction; the idea that we could
do so _accidentally_ while trying to create food to eat is a complete
delusion. We've already created outlandish, strange, non-natural super plants:
every single vegetable that you and I eat. We did so with no regard to safety,
nor understanding of what we were doing. GMOs only improve enormously on this
process.

Again, the utter failure of this argument is apparent in how it can be applied
to any technology: we shouldn't make software because that 1 in a million
program could destroy the power grid / Internet / cause nuclear war, we
shouldn't make medicine because that 1 in a million vaccine will cause people
to drop dead en masse 10 years down the road, etc. If those seem preposterous
to you, I assure you that to plant scientists, geneticists, and EcoEvo folks,
your worry seems equally preposterous.

------
ada1981
This is perhaps the most hilarious thing I've seen. There are plenty of
varieties of delicious tomatoes you can grow or buy.. the idea we need to
"reengineer a genetic fix" seems like something the Onion should be running.

At our cooperative store we have amazing flavorful tomatoes.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
You don't understand the purpose.

The idea is to re-introduce these traits in lines that are amenable to modern
agriculture. Namely, drought/pest/salinity tolerance, firmness and ability to
ship, yield, use in marginal soils, etc. etc.

I'm all for agricultural alternatives, but modern agriculture obviously plays
a huge role in our food production, and will continue to do so for some time.

------
baursak
There's a book called "Tomatoland" that discusses the tomato industry and how
tomatoes were selected not for taste, but to last through the journey to the
supermarket and shelf life once there. Interview with author and excerpt are
here: [http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-
farmi...](http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-
destroyed-the-tasty-tomato)

------
anotheryou
I like the story of the artificial banana flavour to be like the old tasteful
bananas there where. I guess it's not true, but the story of the banana is
simmilar to the fate of the tomato, if not worse, because banas have no seeds,
are all clones and the old kind of banana got mostly wiped by some fungi.

~~~
skykooler
And there is a new breed of the same fungus that is attacking the modern
banana - the Cavendish - and as of yet, there is no replacement banana that we
can substitute if the Cavendish gets wiped out.

~~~
Nursie
There are loads of awesome bananas out there, they just either aren't so soft
and sweet or don't ship well.

Within the last year I have had lady-finger, apple and Fe'i bananas and
various plantains. All delicious!

I want to try red and blue/ice-cream but am having trouble finding them in the
UK or on my travels...

~~~
skykooler
But, as you say, none of these are a good substitute Cavendish, though they
may be fine bananas in their own right.

~~~
Nursie
Apple and lady-finger I have had in the UK, seemed to ship OK and tasted good.

They were much smaller. Red Daccas (the red banana) are commercially available
in some countries like Australia, but probably because they grow them.

I think commercial development of a "Cavendish Replacement" ought to be a real
plan to diversify the banana business. Monocultures are inherently
troublesome. If we could lose this meme in the Europe and North America that
there is such a thing as "a banana" and start eating different varieties, I
think that would be great.

------
pbosko
You should try importing tomatoes from Eastern Europe. They are still very
tasty over here. :)

~~~
4ad
I was born in Romania, visited there less than two weeks ago, and now I am in
the United States. This is simply not true at all. Tomatoes in Romania taste
exactly the same as tomatoes in the United States (e.g. bland).

Even tomatoes bought from farmer's market are not much better because they
don't use the tastiest varieties of tomatoes.

~~~
mclion
In the winter tomatoes have no taste. Real tomatoes are a summer plant. Ask
your parents. ;)

~~~
4ad
I don't have to ask anybody, I have lived in Romania for 21 years. Summer
tomatoes that are not specially sourced are just as crappy in Romania,
Austria, and United States. Slightly better at the farmer's market though. I
have also lived in rural Romania for many months at a time, in the summer, for
over a decade, and have grown tomatoes myself.

The only time I ever got good tomatoes was at some tomato faire, or some
special organic farmer's market (in the summer, of course). And every time it
was outside Romania.

The idea that food in Romania is somehow unaffected by global economic
development is a myth that has to die.

------
david-given
If you refrigerate tomatoes, they go bland --- the cold temperatures kills
some of the flavour.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-
flavor-...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-
refrigerator.html)

~~~
balfirevic
Did they actually test for taste in that research? This guy has and he
disagrees:

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-
tomatoes.htm...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-
tomatoes.html)

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-
refrige...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-refrigerate-
tomatoes-furtther-testing-results.html)

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-
refrigerat...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerate-
tomatoes.html)

~~~
kbart
In supermarkets tomatoes are usually sold not ripened fully (for a longer
shelve life). Keeping them in a warm, bright place will ripe them more and
taste improves slightly.

------
Ericson2314
This is good stuff, but I wish so much effort wasn't spent into making a
_single_ breed. If you have the greenhouse space (granted I see this is
exponential), and some variation is a coin flip whether its better or not,
please peruse both!

I would love 5 varieties of hardy tomato each testing better in its own way!

------
dkersten
_Over the decades, taste has drained out of supermarket tomatoes._

And people say that organic doesn't affect flavour! (Ok ok I know, it doesn't
have to be organic)

I grew my own tomatoes a few years ago and they had a very strong tomato
flavour. Delicious!

------
diimdeep
Cited paper [http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-
hub.ac/content/355/6323/39...](http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-
hub.ac/content/355/6323/391)

------
martinpw
Kumatos are pretty flavorful. In the US you can get them at Trader Joe's.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumato)

~~~
bobcostas55
I tried these once, seemed just as tasteless as any other tomato out of
season.

------
djsumdog
From their website:

> The University of Florida has released our first two hybrids. We are in
> discussions with seed companies about licensing.

I hope they allow people to save seeds. They should patent all their source
seeds immediately and mark them as open/allowing people to use any without
worry of patents.

Farmers will need to be careful as always. Any seeds that happen to get cross
pollinated with seeds from the big producers (Monsanto, DuPont, etc.) run the
risk of paying licensing fees in our current fucked up patenting system
(thanks GE).

~~~
searine
>Any seeds that happen to get cross pollinated

You can actually sue your neighbors and/or these companies for geneflow into
your heirloom crops.

There has never been a recorded lawsuit where a farmer has been sued for
unintentional gene flow. Only intentional patent infringement.

>(thanks GE).

People have been patenting crops for over 100 years.

Nobody cared until GMO's came along...

~~~
dkonofalski
This is exactly why I despise the "urban legend" about Monsanto suing the
poor, tiny farmer because their Round-Up resistant seeds blew into his crop.
The actual story (much like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit) makes a lot
more sense when you learn that the farmer not only knew that their seeds were
Monsanto's but then used Round-Up on all his other crops so that they would
die and only the resistant crops were left over. He then took the seeds from
those crops and planted something like 95% of his field with them (which was
probably 100% but some of the old plants survived). There was no unintentional
wind-blown spreading.

~~~
throwawaydbfif
I still see a problem with this. If GM crops are capable of being wind blown
how does his activity differ at all from someone trying to naturally select
for crops with herbicide resistance?

Any farmer trying to select for a plant with resistance could accidentally end
up reproducing a "patented" plant.

I think there's a fundamental problem with patenting things that are self
replicating. Given enough time a superior GMO plant could take over a field
all by itself with no intervention... Is the land owner/farmer really to blame
if this happens?

A related problem is that it's difficult/impossible to tell if you're growing
a patented seed without expensive tests. As long as the plants are virtually
indistinguishable patent enforcement should not be allowed.

~~~
dkonofalski
Well, there were accusations during the trial that the seeds weren't even
wind-blown and that the farmer trespassed on the property once he saw that the
Round-Up wasn't killing the crops. Monsanto argued that they spaced a buffer
around their farm to prevent wind-blowing and that they routinely mixed up the
perimeter soil to prevent any growth from occurring. Even if we were to be
liberal with the probabilities and assume that the seeds could have blown onto
his land, the concentration of Round-Up resistant plants on the farmer's land
was so unnaturally high that it was easy to prove it was intentional and
willful infringement.

------
ericdykstra
Tomatoes and chickens and pretty much all American agriculture is bred to
maximize profit at every step. This means eschewing things like healthfulness
and tastiness in favor of volume of product, heartiness, and low production
cost.

I highly recommend the book _The Dorito Effect_ to anyone more interested in
how the flavors of food have changed over time. Despite the fluffy name, it's
a very well-researched and well-written book.

------
register
I eat tomatoes grown by my father who is retired and does this as an hobby.
His tomatoes are extremely tasty and satisfying. I really don't miss the need
for any genetic fix. Supermarkets tomatoes are commercialized unripe and then
ripen by artificial means.

~~~
jamesrcole
Do you think the flavour problems with supermarket tomatoes would be fixed by
letting them ripen naturally?

------
vermontdevil
I used to eat tomato sandwiches made from tomoatoes grown in my parents'
backyard. These beefsteak tomatoes were huge and sweet. The store variety are
noticeably bland.

Going back to the backyard and starting again. I think the hard part is
finding the right seed.

------
freddealmeida
I've been spoiled living in Japan. The tomatoes taste amazing here. Is this
more about methods? Do we really need genetic fixes? Couldn't a better process
to make better tomatoes be a longer service strategy?

------
foxhop
I learned that its easier and way faster to quarter tomatoes and freeze them,
then to can.

~~~
tnmrnis
It might be easier and faster but they will lose a lot of flavour during the
freezing. There's a reason you don't refridgerate tomatoes.

~~~
foxhop
They don't appear to loose their flavor. I use them as ingredients in beans,
chili, and sauce. I'm going to freeze way more next year, it turned out
amazing. Sure beats loosing 40 of them to spoilage from a glut harvest! : )

------
cylinder
Couldn't they just go overseas? I think it's only in America where produce
tastes like cardboard.

~~~
gwern
The overseas tomatoes don't ship or grow any better, and consumers are
demonstrably unwilling to pay for them. The point of this research is that by
doing the expensive rare difficult phenotyping & genotyping of flavor of all
the varieties they used (domestic commercial, heirloom, even wild), you can
get a polygenic score which predicts flavor _without_ having to grow & feed to
a taste panel; and with this polygenic score, you can then do molecular
breeding piggybacking on top of normal breeding, to neutralize the damage. For
the most part, there's no inherent biological reason that a robust fast-
growing tomato _has_ to taste bad because the taste chemicals represent such a
physically minute part of the tomatoes; it's just that with zero selection for
taste, the taste gradually suffers over generations.

------
quickben
There is something wrong with the food industry. When I was growing up, they
taught us that we eat veggies because when they are fully mature, all the
nutrients are there and good for us.

Somehow, they found out how to make them look ready but still not ripe. And
now they found out how to screw the taste to taste better.

So they will look and taste good, but the nutritive value will be
questionable.

Waste of research effort.

Edit: to the people modding this down: you realize that research will hit the
poorest hardest? They can't buy organic tomatoes, they think what they _paid_
for is good _nutritive_ food, except it isn't.

~~~
bluGill
You seem to be mistaking organic for ripe nutritious food. Organic just limits
some specific chemicals. That is it. You can replaces those limited chemicals
with other "natural" chemicals which may be (and often are) much more harmful.

Organic does not save the earth. Sometimes is does, but other times it is more
harmful than the conventional practice.

Organic is not more nutritious. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is less (because
the farmer cannot replace the nutrients last year's crop took out)

Organic is not fresher or better tasting. Sometimes it is, but that is not a
reflection on organic, it is a reflection on conventional farmers not finding
it worthwhile to sell fresher.

~~~
kentosi
Can you back the claim up that natural chemicals are being used and are
harmful?

I thought the whole point of organic is that there are no pesticides being
used in the first place.

~~~
SteveNuts
Organic foods can still use "chemicals", you just can't use synthetically
created additives (ferts, pesticides, etc.)

AFAIK they could spray the crops with arsenic and it could still be "organic".

