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You have to stop the human intervention at the right moment though. In my country there are maybe 10 apple varieties that are grown commercially and they are su

by pingec 8y ago

You have to stop the human intervention at the right moment though. In my country there are maybe 10 apple varieties that are grown commercially and they are surely tastier than their wild ancestors. However, taste is just one of many criteria when deciding which apples to grow. For example there are 50 years old apple trees in my neighbour's garden that are oh-my-god out of this world tasty. They are also small, do not produce regular quantities each year and prone to diseases. So they are not viable for commercial use but still the best apple you have ever tasted if you manage to find one. So perhaps organic could also mean focusing on other criteria than growing fruit that is most viable to grow in huge quantities, that is more resistant to various diseases and other chemicals that kill insects/fungi, that look beautiful and have a long shelf life and taste good enough.

colechristensen 8y ago
I think we should stop using shallow adjectives to signal quality. "organic" is just a marketing label. Instead of trying to sort everything into two bins and decide how to gatekeep "organic" how about we do science and education and labeling to teach people the details of how their food is bred and produced and how quality and effects vary.
- strainer 8y ago
  Organic is not a marketing label - here[1] are the extra regulations which any food labelled as organic in US must be certified to satisfy. These regulations have been developed and studied for decades, here is one recent review [2] [1]https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1025eb0e6b67cadf9d3b40&rgn=div6&view=text&node=7:3.1.1.9.32.7 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1... [2]https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustainably.html https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustaina...
vram22 8y ago
Interesting points.. >For example there are 50 years old apple trees in my neighbour's garden that are oh-my-god out of this world tasty. Ha ha, I've eaten a few Indian fruits that are like that, both as a kid and later. One is jujube [1], called ber in Hindi. When living in Central India as a teenager, used to wander around in open, lightly forested areas near the town, which had these ber trees. We used to eat plenty of their fruit for free. Very tasty. Sweet. The still-slightly-unripe ones were the best. Overripe ones had a bit of a bad smell though. Yellowish-green in color when under-ripe, red when ripe, a bit smaller than, or the same size as a golf ball. I think they probably were high in sugar (fructose, maybe) since when sold in bazaars, flies were usually buzzing around them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujube Another one was karonda [2]. Tangy, sour, astringent, may best describe its taste. Makes your mouth literally water - a lot. Punjabi people make a pickle from it. I had some of that pickle once in a Bangalore restaurant. Mind-blowing taste. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa_carandas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa_carandas

by pingec 8y ago

colechristensen 8y ago

I think we should stop using shallow adjectives to signal quality. "organic" is just a marketing label. Instead of trying to sort everything into two bins and decide how to gatekeep "organic" how about we do science and education and labeling to teach people the details of how their food is bred and produced and how quality and effects vary.

strainer 8y ago
Organic is not a marketing label - here[1] are the extra regulations which any food labelled as organic in US must be certified to satisfy. These regulations have been developed and studied for decades, here is one recent review [2] [1]https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1025eb0e6b67cadf9d3b40&rgn=div6&view=text&node=7:3.1.1.9.32.7 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1... [2]https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustainably.html https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustaina...

vram22 8y ago

Interesting points.. >For example there are 50 years old apple trees in my neighbour's garden that are oh-my-god out of this world tasty. Ha ha, I've eaten a few Indian fruits that are like that, both as a kid and later. One is jujube [1], called ber in Hindi. When living in Central India as a teenager, used to wander around in open, lightly forested areas near the town, which had these ber trees. We used to eat plenty of their fruit for free. Very tasty. Sweet. The still-slightly-unripe ones were the best. Overripe ones had a bit of a bad smell though. Yellowish-green in color when under-ripe, red when ripe, a bit smaller than, or the same size as a golf ball. I think they probably were high in sugar (fructose, maybe) since when sold in bazaars, flies were usually buzzing around them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujube Another one was karonda [2]. Tangy, sour, astringent, may best describe its taste. Makes your mouth literally water - a lot. Punjabi people make a pickle from it. I had some of that pickle once in a Bangalore restaurant. Mind-blowing taste. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa_carandas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa_carandas