Organic foods taste better than standard processed choices, poll reveals

• Organic farming is associated with the non-use of artificial chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers, helping to keep toxins out of air, water and soil.
• And while the poll of 813 people showed 95 per cent of respondents are buying organic to avoid pesticides and food additives; taste, it would appear, is equally important.
• According to their poll, fruit and vegetable scored particularly high on taste, with 72 per cent of respondents saying they taste better than non-organic.
• Meat also scored at the top, with 71 per cent saying they preferred the taste of organic meat.
• "A recent survey by the UK government's DEFRA found that after taste and health, locality was the third driving force for consumer purchases of organic foods," says Simon Wright, a consultant on organic foods.
• While structural barriers exist in building up sources of organic ingredients, gains could be maximised by UK suppliers playing to the strengths of the country's climate.
• Obvious as this seems, they can not compete on organic vanilla or organic tea, but they can on brassicas, vegetables, high protein wheat for bread, for example.
• According to Wright, British Sugar has just pulled out of the UK organic market because of a lack in demand.
• The EU regulation recognises that it is not yet possible to make products entirely from organic ingredients.
• As a result the manufacturer can use up to 5 per cent of certain non-organic food ingredients and still label the product as organic.
• However, genetically-modified ingredients and artificial food additives are never allowed in organic foods.
• For foods which contain 70 to 95 per cent organic ingredients, the word organic appears only in the ingredients list, and as a description on the front of label to show the percentage of ingredients which are organic.