So it turns out those continentals have been right all along. While we’ve been ploughing up and down the supermarket aisles with our Delia-approved shopping lists in hand, going into a blue funk when we can’t find the tinned mince, the French and Italians have been plunging their noses into bunches of fresh carrots and mounds of peaches at the local market and allowed themselves to be led by what smells good. And what’s been guiding them? Nothing less than the plant’s immune system itself.

Scientists have discovered that the antioxidants that naturally protect plants against disease are also responsible for smell and flavour. In other words, our palates have evolved to be drawn to the health-giving aspects of our food. The better the smell, the healthier the plant.

For Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, this counters the common snipe against the organic movement – that it is a middle-class fad fuelled by those who will pay a premium for a sweeter-tasting carrot. He claims a substantial body of evidence points to organically grown plants having a higher vitamin, mineral and trace-element content and containing more antioxidants. This would appear to support the central tenet of the movement – that healthy soil results in healthy plants, which results in healthy consumers.

Of course, the leap of faith is that if you eat food with higher levels of these compounds, it will be better for you. “But that’s what has been the real driver behind the organic movement,” he says. “People trust their palates.”

Background

• Top 35 organic box schemes in the UK

• Fairtrade dinner party menu

• Never mind organic, feel the food print

• Official: organic really is better

• Locavores: the new food fad

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Organic food sales have grown by an average of 26 per cent a year for the past two decades, and vegetable box schemes are soaring by 53 per cent. People will doubtless continue to debate whether you can taste the difference between an organic and non-organic potato – especially with the economic downturn focusing the mind and squeezing the wallet – and some will always believe that intensive poultry rearing is a price we should be prepared to pay for cheap chickens, but Holden says the unanswerable case for organically produced food lies in sustainability and the environment.

Our concerns about global warming and fossil-fuel depletion have taken us to a place that Lady Eve Balfour could never have imagined when she founded the Soil Association in 1946. “She always promoted local food, but her argument was about freshness – the nearer to the point of production you eat it, the more good it will do you,” says Holden. “She obviously wasn’t thinking about carbon footprints, but I think intuitively she was on to the same thing.”

Worries about food miles are already well known, but Holden says that by banning the use of nitrogen fertilisers, organic farming is in itself a significant contribution. “Nitrogen fertiliser gives off nitrous oxide, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and it uses huge amounts of natural gas to make it. This is an area of organic farming that has not yet emerged in public debate. Food is responsible for between 20 and 30 per cent of our emissions, roughly 50/50 before and after the farm gate. So there is no more significant difference that an individual can make than changing their food habits.”

That’s why he believes the Times/Soil Association Organic Food Awards, this year in association with Highland Spring, are so important. “It’s not just some fluffy thing, about rewarding great-tasting food. It’s more than that, it’s deeper than that,” he says.

Next month a panel taken from the great and the good of the food world will sip, slurp and munch their way through thousands of entries to reward the very best in organic food. And this year we are introducing a special Times Reader Food Hero award, which gives you the chance to nominate your favourite organic supplier or producer. So if you know a brilliant butcher, baker or organic cheesemaker, we’d like to know. Visit timesonline.co.uk/foodanddrink to put your hero forward.

You can be heroes…

The winners of this year’s Times/Soil Association Organic Food Awards, in association with Highland Spring, will be announced in August.

Click here to submit your nomination
Your personal details will not be used for any purposes other than the administration of this award.

Or click here to find out more

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