Recipe.com isn’t just for cooking ideas – it also has some really interesting blogs. One topic that came up around Earth Day earlier this week particularly caught my attention.

Is organic overrated?

According to a new report, most Americans think that “organic” is just an excuse to charge more. However, 55% of those polled think that organic food is healthier for you, and 41% think it tastes better.

So what’s the deal? Is organic really better, healthier, tastier, and more expensive?

It really depends on what you’re eating.

For a lot of foods, including the so-called “Dirty Dozen,” it makes sense to go organic. Fewer pesticides and chemicals to worry about, and a lighter footprint on the earth. Some foods, however, are just upcharged – do you really NEED organic cereal in the morning? – and others simply don’t make sense from a quality standpoint.

Tea is one of those. Organic teas are…well, complicated. We really like the concepts of fair trade (although not necessarily the Fair Trade organization itself, which has a lot of administrative overhead) and appropriate payments to growers and farmers for everything from tea to chocolate to coffee. But organic is an issue. Y’see, in order to be certified organic, a field has to be free of synthetic pesticide use and meet other various requirements for a period of several years. And naturally derived pesticides and other chemicals can still be used – in fact, farmers often apply quite a lot of pyrethrins etc. to their fields to control insects.

But the real issue in the tea world is that a tea bush takes about 8-10 years to start producing really good-quality tea. If a field has to be synthetics-free for 5 years, and then it takes 8-10 to get the good tea…well, you see where we have a problem. Only now are really good organic teas starting to become available, in my opinion – although there are undoubtedly small producers the world over who’ve never used synthetic pesticides on their plantations, and therefore are producing “organic” teas without the Certified label. Tisanes are easier; they don’t take time to mature, and you can go organic much more quickly. But true teas? Still not convinced.

All of this is changing, of course – as plantations switch over and consumers demand organic in places like Whole Foods, and as the tea market as a whole expands, there will be lots more high-quality options there. But for now, I just don’t think the flavour is quite up to par.

So yeah, organic is overrated. For now…