Also, organic farmers manage the soil differently. Intensive industrial farming depletes soils and relies on extensive use of refined fertilizers to make up forthe deficit. The soil at organic farms is often richer and plants can pick up more minerals, which can have a real impact on flavor.

I'm not sure about that when you factor in that in the US (and Canada?) antibiotics and recombinant bovine growth hormone are commonly given to cattle. The side effects of rGBH include puss in the milk.

This goes doubly for eggs - organic & free-range eggs are just a world apart from regular farm eggs.

It would be interesting to do a blind taste-test between organic and non-organic produce ... Pepsi Challenge style.

And the rats preferred organic.

It is a puzzler that he mentions one small sample of rats

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

that doesn't show the same result (indifference to whether or not food is "organic") shown in many human studies he mentions in his article. This kind of study needs a bigger sample size and a great deal more replication.

Here's another problem: how do we know that either human beings or rats prefer what is best for them? Preferences for smells and tastes may have evolutionary origins that are then exploited by adaptations of food organisms in ways that are not beneficial to the eater.

Weird that they chose rats and haven't (that we know of) done a study with humans. After all, it's not as if such a study has any inherent danger.

We were however capable of telling the difference between organic and non-organic chicken tough.