I too find it difficult to digest that in the long run there isn't much difference between conventional and organically grown food. I encourage everyone to become a little more self sustainable and give growing your own a try.

Good point—that's even better. I just don't have the space at the moment.

Organic is a choice for those with disposable incomes to spend more money to maybe make the environment better.
I of course dont disagree with this altruistic view: helping the environment is generally "good", but often its done with a lazy approach to understanding the real issues...
Scientists, however, have a ruthless well read and scathing community trying to trip them up and prove them wrong constantly.
If they approach with the "wooly" altruistic approach that many (and I'm sorry to be rude), but quack writers do, they would be strung out, and rightly so. Science and it's results are vital. Critical in fact...
unfortunately: we trust them when it suits us and distrust them equally when it doesnt.
"Ipods and Express trains are all good, but if genetic engineering or pesticides dont seem natural I can distrust them".

The upshot is:
Organic is a choice, in some cases a very nice friendly choice that reduces food miles, pesticide use etc.
It is no-longer a matter of health, according to minds far superior and well researched than your/our own.

The reasons are now social, and the argument of whether I buy my milk from 5 miles away is great.
The argument of whether we can look down our noses at starving people using fertilisers/insecticedes to improve their yield (by up to 50% some claim) then becomes a much more cloudy one... And one that the opulent "islington" blogosphere may be too middle class to ever understand.

Yes, of course science and research are vital. I am not—nor do I claim to be—a scientist or a researcher. I'm not a "quack writer", either. I was merely reporting the fact that this latest study, which itself is based on previously conducted ones, was saying that organic food might not be better for us in the long term. And that is surprising to many of us.

More research needs to be done, clearly, because, at the moment, we are still confused.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't look down my noses at "starving people" using fertilizer to make a living. Many of them will continue to do so, and that's their choice. I've been eating non-organic food all my life, and still do. I buy organic milk and I try to buy other organic produce when I can (mainly because I don't want to ingest pesticides), but I also buy conventional.

Also, I believe you're calling me a snob. You couldn't be more wrong. I'm from a working-class background in Essex, England.

Coincidentally, they talked about this topic on an episode of Penn & Teller's Bulls@#%. Though I know it is television and their views can be a bit skewed, there are some interesting facts they presented:
1. Organic farmers do in fact use pesticides, contrary to what we believe that they don't. They have to. Sure, they aren't allowed to use synthetic pesticides (that's the difference), but it doesn't mean the "natural" pesticides are any safer. In fact, the older "natural" pesticides may be more poisonous than the newer synthetic ones.

2. Organic farmers have to use "natural" fertilizers (i.e. manure or simply put, cow dung) which in fact can harbor more harmful bacteria that can make us sick (E. coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella).

3. With regarding to tasting better, they did an "experiment" at a local farmer's market where they had one plate of non-organic and one plate of organic fruit. Participants didn't know which plate was which. Results were that approximately 70% preferred the non-organic plate.

4. Additionally, to further debunk the "organic foods tastes better" myth, they did a second experiement where they took one non-organic banana and cut it in half. They put one half on a "organic" and the other half on a "non-organic" plate. They purposely mislead people by opening disclosing which plate had the "orgnanic" banana. About 80% thought the "organic" banana tasted better! Imagine their face when they realized they were eating the EXACT SAME BANANA!

Don't get me wrong, I prefer fruits at the farmer's market as compared to supermarkets because they are generally much sweeter and taste better. As it pertains to organic vs non-organic, I have to say I am not quite sold on it's benefit vs cost.

How funny about the banana experiment! Maybe it's psychosomatic. I'm nowhere near an expert on the subject, but I think more research needs to be done so that we all have a clearer understanding of what's going on.

On the face of it, if money were no object, I'd choose to buy organic and/or from a farmers market over conventional supermarket fare any day. But then if it's really no better, why bother? Is it because I don't like the thought of shoving pesticides in my mouth? Maybe. But, like you say, there might well be some present anyway, even if they're in smaller amounts.

It's also relevant for "natural" and "organic" beauty products, where the line is even more blurred (in those cases, what's "natural"? What's "organic"? Just because something is "93 per cent natural", is that good? What's in the other seven per cent—plutonium?)

Science would be science whether one likes it or not. In theory, there is no reason that the crops cultivated using organic manure, in place of chmical fertlizer would be more nutritious. More important would be how best they are used. If adequately used, both organic manure and chemcal fertilizer would produce equaly good crops.

Well, yes, that may be true. I personally prefer to reduce the amount of pesticides I eat, regardless of whether the food contains more nutrients.

One factor is: organic food may not be more nutritious per se, but it's more likely to end up on our plates sooner than non-organic food (as, without pesticides, it spoils quicker). So in that sense maybe more of the nutrients are retained.

So I think it's about the overall picture. We definitely need more research. I just came across this article from 2007, which says the opposite to what the most recent study says:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2753446.ece

It is a really helpful information about organic foods. I live in a village and organic foods are very important for us,
there is also a very useful guide that i got great informatin about organic foods:

http://agricultureguide.org/

One may judge the things based on one's own knowledge. Fine. But one should understand that over the time, the knowledges have become profoundly diversified. As the result, today, one cannot know about too many things adequately, regardless however knowledgeable one may be. Before one argue about the superiority of so called organic produces, one had better understand the basic principle of plant growth. What the plant requires for its growth is not the organic matter. It requires inorganic substances. Indeed the amazing ability of plant is to be able to synthesize the organic matter from inorganic substances like carbon dioxide, water, nitrate ion(sometimes ammonium ion), phosphate ion, potassium ion, calcium ion, magnesium ion, sulfate ion, so on so forth. Yes, you can grow the plants by applying organic manure like compost. But one should know that plants cannot uptake the compost as it is. Plants should wait until the compost has been decomposed to release inorganic matters like nitrate ion(or ammonium ion), phosphate ion, so on so forth. Whether you apply organic manure or chemical fertilizers, the plants will absorb the nutrients in the form of inorganic ions. This is the fact established for more than a century, not the fiction. If this is the fact, how can one expect that the crops grown with organic manure would taste better or be more nutritious? You may argue that there are research results supporting those imaginations. Even though they are there, it would be difficult to logically explain. So they cannot be accepted until such explanation would be available. Despite the fact that the idea of organic farming has bee with us for three decades or so, by now, 95% of agricultural produces in the markets are non-organic. Are 95% of us suffering from the lack of anti-oxidants and/or others? In fact, in today's there are billions of people who are suffering from malnutrition. Please, you the rich, had better be grateful for the abundances you are enjoying, which are the fruits of modern farming technologies, instead of misleading of the innocent people. (Chong Woon Hong www.soilove.com---in Korean)

I totally agree that the use of pesticides be minimized(but not totally rejected). However, I cannot agree with the idea of replacing the use of chemical ferilizers with organic manure. In doing so, much more labor will be needed for farming and farming would be more costly. Anyone who can afford that for himself/herself may very well do it on his/her backyard quietly. One had better reqlize the fact that organic farming cannot be accepted as the norm of real world agriculture now and many years to come, if the humans are to enjoy the industrialized life-style; majority of populatiom living in the mammoth-towns and only handful number of people are living in the rural area near the farms to engage themselves in producing the foods to feed the entire population. That has been why despite continued preaching on organic farming for a long time, 95% of famers are still following more produtive farming(non-organic farming) all over the world, excepting in the regions where farmers are so poor that they could not afford more productive farming technologies. In such regions returns from the farming is extremely poor and the people too. Go and see, Sub-Saharn Africa, for example. In the Western Europe where the farmers are using abundant amount of fertilizer, the average yield of cereals is more than 7 tons/ha, while the same is less than 1.5 ton/ha in Africa where the use of fertilizer is nearly nil.