Well, I would say that there is a simple way to evaluate the taste aspect: do an experiment. My dad used to swear to me that brown-colored eggs taste better than white eggs. I was skeptical, so we did a little taste test. He couldn't tell the difference at all. Also, note that the most highly praised wines often do poorly in blind-taste tests against super-cheap wines from New Jersey.
Yup, but it's easier for some foods than for others. You can easily take two eggs, cook them exactly identically, and try them both side-by-side. Similarly for wines, which don't even require cooking. It's a bit harder with, say, a chicken for roasting. Even if you have an oven that'll take two chickens and don't have a spouse who'll object to roasting two when you only need one, it's far from trivial to avoid (say) overcooking one a little and undercooking the other a little, and that difference could easily swamp the subtler one you're looking for.
I'm no...
I've been wondering whether there's any solid evidence that organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food-- the arguments I've seen on the subject have been theoretical/aesthetic.
I'm interested in anything in the range from personal stories to scientific studies, but would prefer to avoid extremely general arguments or claims that people who prefer one or the other are demonstrating character defects.
Edited to add: Thanks for the replies. I'm hoping for experiments which test the effects of food produced in various ways on organisms, especially multi-cellular organisms. It was interesting to find out that plants which have to fight off insects for themselves have more mutagens.
The mutation experiment is very cute, but it leaves out the possibility of damage that isn't related to mutation-- for example, hormonal effects. Also, if it's done on a standard bacteria acquiring the ability to make a particular nutrient, this might not be a test for mutation in general.
I realize experiments on organic vs. conventional would be difficult, especially if you're tracking human health. It would be very hard to avoid confounding factors like other lifestyle factors and income.
"Conventional food" is actually a large blob of a concept-- different pesticides, fertilizers, etc. are used on different foods at different times, so finding out what people are actually exposed to would be difficult.