I was reading some pros and cons about organic food this morning and was struck by a statement to this effect: “Since no preservatives or other chemicals to prolong freshness are used organic food tends to spoil faster.” This could only be true in a few cases such as the practice of gassing a hard, green tasteless tomato to look ripe and shipping it across the country. Moreover, given equal stages of ripeness, organic food more than holds its own.
A simple experiment can be done by anyone: Take a supermarket mass produced cucumber and a fresh picked homegrown organic cucumber and place both on a plate, way back in your refrigerator, for a week. My experience has been that the supermarket cucumber will be covered with mold while the homegrown cucumber may be starting to shrivel a bit - this also shows the kind of nutritional protection mass produced fruits and vegetables lend to your body.
Because commercial produce must be picked “firm” for the rigors of shipping they are not allowed to develop sugars normally produced in the ripe stage. Commercial produce is designed to look good, last on the shelves and yield a much profit as possible while the purpose of organic food is to be nutritious and tasty. Only a hard core urbanite does not know the difference in taste of store tomatoes versus homegrown tomatoes! This is true for fruit as well as vegetables although a poorly produced organic item may not taste better than an exceptionally well produced commercial item.
As in marketing and politics, commercial interests have the money to influence most people’s perceptions but you should check out the information over at the Organic Consumers Association site and decide yourself.
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