Sanet Post, Chris Alenson,
Food Quality - A Matter of Taste
March 20, 1997

Food Quality-A Mater of Taste!

The Organic Retailers & Growers Association of Australia have a wide membership from growers, processors, distributors, consumers and over 40 retail outlets marketing organic foods. One of the many comments received from consumers is that, the food has more flavour, it tastes like food used to taste, or it tastes like food we once grew ourselves.

As the technical adviser to this association there comes a time when perhaps anecdotal evidence starts to weigh up in favour of there really being a scientific reason for these observations.

Discussion

We know that food flavour can be a matter of sweet, sour, bitter, but we also know that flavours that are synthesised for the food industry consist of complex chemical compounds such as benzyl acetate (fruity raspberry), isoamyl acetate (banana), tomato isobutylthiazole cis 4-heptenal.

Many factors are involved in imparting flavour to fruit and vegetables such as variety, hours of sunshine received during the growth period, absence or maintenance of moisture, grown to maturity(ie. ripened), but also of course fertilisation and general soil fertility.

The following hypothesis is proposed for organic foods reporting stronger more intense flavours. A soil well endowed with organic matter cycling correctly will break down to humus and hundreds of other complex chemical compounds. We know that around the rhizosphere of a plant, the most active microbial area, many times the amount of organic compounds are present than in the surrounding soil.

In the knowledge that plants can take up quite complex organic compounds is there the possibility that in an organic rich soil and one high in microbial activity this increase in organic compounds around the plant rhizosphere enables a plant to take up many of these compounds which act through photosynthesis and enzymatic activity to produce or be converted into the compounds that we recognise as food flavour.

Working as a soil consultant over many years has enabled me to see a direct correlation between an increase in soil fertility and an increase in the quality of plant products(vigour, health, increase in yield). The reason however for the perceived increase in flavour has been a long-time niggly question for me.

Is there any merit in this hypothesis that an organic rich soil high in microbial life and fertility, ie. a soil farmed organically, may result in produce that has enhanced flavour characteristics or are the comments of many hundreds of consumers nothing more than perceptions based on a food choice criteria.

Chris Alenson
Technical Adviser
Organic Advisory Service
Organic Retailers & Growers Association of Australia
61 03 95607066
email alenson.chris.cj@bhp.com.au