You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Just because some organic producers have "attitude" does not mean that the overall message is wrong. Of course it is stupid to feed young children or anybody pesticide laced anything-at-all. We would all prefer organic if we could afford it. I am able to because I do not have a family of 6 to feed. So I do understand the economic imperative.

Likening the move to healthier, more organic, locally grown, pesticide and hormone free foods to privatization of hospitals and schools is simply illogical and as rabidly ignorant as the people you profess to despise.

Fundamentalist anythings are nauseating. Fundamentalist organic food people are as irritating as the fundamentalist "bring on the pesticides, baby, just make it cheap" people. Of whom you are the president, it appears.

I am only sorry you get paid to write where decent, well meaning people might accidentally read it.

In the mean time, Zoe, you go right ahead. Fill your boots. You just enjoy that Genetically Engineered Kraft Dinner with Melamine laced instant mashed and snow-peas from China.

Newstatesman readers from all over the world will probably send you get well cards eventually.

eb: it would not surprise me to find the 'organic' foodstuffs in supermarkets may not come up to the highest possible regulatory standards, and that the supermarkets are using the label to justify even more price-gouging. Possibly. I don't know, i just don't trust them, especially the behemoths like Tescos & Sainsburys.

without a shadow of a doubt the supermarkets are integral parts of the NWO, they are umbilically tied to agribusiness, and are entirely caught up with the notion of reducing wages for the many to increase profits for the few.

but i certainly don't regard organic itself as having anything to do with the NWO, rather the opposite.

as for AGW - its surely a scientific basis that an effect has repercussions - and pumping billions upon billions of tons of chemicals into our environment cannot fail to have an effect. It has occurred to me however, that the constant focussing upon AGW has managed to divert attention from pollution and the other essential environmental concerns, such as deforestation, soil erosion, and the poisoning of our land, sea and air. So perhaps its both?

santa exists however, but has now moved into manufacturing and retail, and instead of just magicking the items, now employs many people and elves to create them, and gets parents to buy them (often offering free credit!) in order to pump the economy. He is regarded as being essential for the global economy - how on Earth can you say he doesn't exist?!?

[damn anarchist troublemakers! :P ]

Good article. And I'm convinced that yes, it is a fact that organic vegetables carry more nutrition. However, that isn't the point. You can only process so much of the good stuff - if, say, 2 carrots and one organic carrot are equivalent, and either portion carries all the goodness you can take for the day, then any more than that will simply be excreted.

As the article points out, then, the point is what you're eating - a carrot - not whether it's organic or not, unless you're on a very - and I mean very - tightly calorie controlled diet. Frankly the only people who are likely to work out the exact energy output from different types of food and make sure they're maximising energy in against their weight are professional athletes looking for the extra .1% to beat a rival. For the rest of us we don't or can't carry out such detailed portion control and thus the extra nutrition value carried by organic foods is entirely incidental.

We've fetishised food to the point where people think that it contributes in a large way to your life expectancy which, so long as you get some kind of balanced diet, simply isn't true.

More examples of NWO propaganda. There is NO scientific evidence to supports claims that organic foods tast better and are more nutritious than none organic foods.

The entire organic construct is a scam. Chemicals are used, they may come form a reduced list, but the reality is, there are only two sources of organic food, the ones you grow at home and foods that grow in the wild.

Over the next few years, we will see enormous pressure on global food supplies. Costs are going to rise alarmingly and this will crush the organic movement.

BTW, we the public aren`t stupid. I shop at Sainsburys and we know how they shift their organic stock...they remove all the alternative choices from the shelves.....this is how organic sales are proped up. it stinks and I and my wife refuse to buy organic products.

what is being ignored here are the consequences of non-organic agriculture. Whether it tastes better (i've had organic that's tasted better, and i've had organic that's tasted worse), whether or not it is more nutritious (and here i have to say there seems quite secure evidence that a product grown in a somewhat artificial environment, with often poisonous chemicals around and in it as fertilisers and pesticides, is less nutritious than one grown in an organic, balanced environment.), are, to some degree, irrelevant.

it is the very real *material* damage that artificial fertilisers and pesticides are doing not only to the crop-land itself, but the entire ecosystem in which we live - the land becomes polluted, the streams and rivers fouled, groundwater contaminated, eventually even the seas and oceans themselves poisoned. This is partly why our bees are getting worryingly near extinction, why so many butterflies ARE now extinct, why the Natural World is in decline across our entire biosphere. And yes, it seems somewhat likely that chemicals that have entered our food change are at least *partly* responsible for the increases in susceptibility to certain environmental chemicals in the last couple of decades, ie the growth in allergies.

whether or not organic food is more beneficial to *us*, it is indisputable that it is beneficial to our *environment* - and that, thankfully despite the insane attempts of the High-Modernists and Global Agri-Business, is still where our survival comes from, and is based upon. That organic carrot may not taste much better to you - but it will increase the chances of your Grandchildren actually having crop-lands upon which to grow carrots in *their* time.