I have a Vons, they became pretty similar to sister brand Safeway in the past decade. It's definitely worse produce now.
Organic used to be things with more damage from insects and such, and have a shorter shelf life. Now it's food that costs more, so it has higher quality.
You want to know what I blame for tasteless vegetables at the grocery store? Organic veggies. Hear me out.
Stores love premium brands. The profit margin is higher and they make the cheap brands look like a better deal.
In a grocery store produce section, the "organic" aisle there is the premium brand. At one point in time, organic was more tasty, but now it's the same mass-produced, over-transported crap.
If you took away their "organic" brand, they'd find another way to coax you to spend more money. If they did that by finding and marketing tastier vegetables, they'd empty my wallet PDQ.
Organic food is vastly more popular now and thus Whole foods had more competition from the likes of Walmart and Costco in the organic produce space. This has driven margins down and that has cut into their profit margins.
My experience is that the organic produce variety is slightly better at WF, but the quality no better than the local organic coops or the better coventional grocers.
But that's going to be highly variable by location and who the local competitors are.
I think you've been misinformed about organic food. It's not healthier, isn't necessarily better for the environment, and the profit margins are much higher.
Like anything else there's going to be some amount of fraud going on if it's profitable.
My experience buying mostly organic produce for a decade has shown to have generally better results than conventional. Conventional produce doesn't taste as good at the very least, and it's very obvious there can be significant differences.
Organic fruits rot much quicker, it's impossible to keep organic strawberries around for more than a day.
Organic heads of romaine lettuce are often full of living insects like tiny green aphids and other small winged bugs. Previously finding an insect in my produce was such an exceptional occurrence and my perspective so skewed by consuming only conventional produce that I would dispose of it if there were any evidence of insects, finding it so abhorrent as to be bad. Now when there are insects, which is quite common with organic lettuce, I somewhat rejoice in the evidence of insects finding my food an appropraite place to live, wash it off, and eat.
Having said that, most of my experience is in the SF bay area at quite high quality grocery stores where the produce department is large and almost entirely organic from local suppliers, the New Leaf in Half Moon Bay for example is organic by default, conventional clearly labeled and the exception. These places move so much organic produce there's no problem stocking large quantities and varieties without throwing it all away due to the short shelf life. Whenever I'm visiting the midwest and try continuing my normal diet of predominately organic produce, my options tend to be limited to Whole Foods and they don't have much organic produce because the local population isn't buying it. What organic stuff they do have is of notably worse quality than what I've grown accustomed to, not from local sources, and often packaged in branded bags or plastic containers with a suspiciously chemical taste I've come to associate with conventional produce.
There seems to be some access privileges in play with quality organic produce. If you're in an affluent area with health-conscious people and abundant local sources, the grocers have incredible organic produce and there's an obvious advantage. YMMV
No more nutritious. Which isn't what organic food was ever supposed to be. The "organic" label is, and always has been, about pesticides. Consumers tend to get confused and think that organic food must be generally better, and I'm sure agricultural companies don't mind that misconception, but this study shouldn't surprise anyone who does their homework.
Indeed. I'm not sure I've ever noticed organic produce tasting better, overall. It certainly does look worse, which may be influencing how I feel about it.
As my own main food preparer, though, the main issue I have with organic is that it's less convenient. It takes me about the same time to chop up an onion or tomato no matter if it has a four inch diameter (non-organic, from Walmart) or a two inch diameter (from the organic bin at Shoppers Food or where ever), but I have to use a lot more of the organic ones to get the same amount of veggie. Also, organic veggies are far more often misshapen or have bad spots that have to be cut out, which I assume is because tomatoes that aren't being speed-ripen have more time for spots to go bad.
All in all, I'll keep buying food that looks good over food that might taste a little better (assuming I'm just unobservant).
I buy non-organic vegetables and meat from my grocery store at a significantly lower price than whole foods and to be honest I don't notice a quality difference.
I’ve long held a notion that organic produce is better mostly because it’s fresher - it has to be since it doesn’t have an unnaturally long shelf life.
One thing I have noticed that organic tends to do well is add a bit of variety. The selection of foods is slightly different which I like. Also some food comes out slightly better since it isn't as hardened for the mass market supply chain.
This article is making an awfully large assumption, that the "organic" in the supermarket is anything close to "organic" as originally envisioned. It's not.
Major agrobusiness concerns have latched onto "organic" as a way to charge premium prices, and hence, do the absolute bare minimum whlie fighting to water down the standard.
It's honestly so bad, I'm surprised "organic" food demonstrated any advantages at all in the study.
Polyn covers a lot of this in Omnivore's Dilemma, in the industrial organic section.
I've been buying organic produce for years and it definitely doesn't taste as good as non-organic produce. An organic banana is about half the size of a non organic banana, it is more mealy and it does not taste nearly as good. But if I bought food on taste alone I would live on Ben and Jerry's. I know the definitions of "Organic" are full of loopholes but I generally think that whatever they did to make the banana twice as big and twice as tasty is probably not good for me.
Organic used to be things with more damage from insects and such, and have a shorter shelf life. Now it's food that costs more, so it has higher quality.
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