Interestingly enough that has been done with rats: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/dining/03curi.html

And the rats preferred organic.

Thanks for this very interesting link, by an author whose writings I like a lot. (He is a chemist who writes about food, a good background to have for this thread.)

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.

Very interesting, thanks.

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.

Actually, we have tried this with my mother in law (not that I want to pick on her) who was convinced that organic bananas tasted better. We made her taste the bananas blindfolded and she couldn't tell the organic and non-organic bananas apart.

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