Tesco organic apples came out on top in “The great organic taste taste” in the Observer's Food Monthly, published yesterday, while samples of the fruit from other leading high street operators were not well-received.
Perhaps most surprisingly given overall reputation, the M&S sample in the batch scored lowest. But the organics industry as a whole came in for a sever roasting, with the magazine's columnist damning of the poor quality overall.
The subjective tests, carried out by OFM columnist Jay Rayner and chef John Torode, scored and judged the five selected organic choices as follows:
• Tesco organic apple bag ñ six or seven for £1.99. “A nice apple. Good and crisp and not floury. Not a massive apple taste but likable all the same”. 4 stars.
• Safeway children's apples ñ £2.09 for eight. “That's odd. It tastes like a pear. Still, not offensive”. 3 stars.
• Somerfield organic dessert apples ñ £1.99 for eight. “Flagrant with honeyed tones. Not everyone's thing, but we enjoyed it”. 3 stars.
• Morrisons Royal Gala ñ £1.29 for four. “We think they mean it to be juicy, but instead it dissolves into something wet and sloppy in the mouth. Not much body”. 2 stars.
• M&S Braeburn organic ñ £1.89 for four. “Nasty. The flesh is foamy and crumbly. Brings back bad memories for John of an Australian childhood, when all apples tasted this way. 1 star.
The pair taste tested 80 organic foods and drinks in 16 different categories, the results of which, as Rayner wrote a column entitled Organic? No thanks “were dismal”.
He added: “Yes there were some stand out items - But among the ranks of crisps and dried spaghetti, apples, marmalades, pasta sauces and smoked salmon, there was a legion of mediocre products, many that scored zero or one [star].
“It confirmed to me what I had long thought; that the billion-pound organic market is, for the most part, a gigantic con, and that its willing victims are the affluent middle classes.”
Rayner added that the perceived health benefits of organic foods are a myth and that the insistence of retailers in expanding their ranges ever wider is “the ultimate victory of marketing over reality”.
