You know, I'm in a weird situation where I strongly believe you're incorrect in the way you see government and companies, but I think you're absolutely right in not believing me. Without personal context and experimentation, if you were to believe the ravings of what essentially would seem to be an internet activist over the people you've been told have had your best interests at heart for all your life, I think you'd have to be some sort of unstable mind or affected by some strong, previously existing bias. The damning evidence on my end that inorganic foods are terrible for your health is almost completely wrapped up in my personal experiences with foods. To make a long story very short, transitioning from a conventional to organic diet, I felt little change that I could definitively pin on the diet, as I was exercising with increasing frequency and losing weight at the same time. After being on an organic diet for about a year, I accidentally bought milk that was labeled inorganic, but I didn't realize it at the time. The taste was indescribably vitriolic. After smelling it and searching for a "best by" date, I realized my mistake. I had no expectation that this would taste any differently than the organic variety, even if I had known it wasn't organic, as my choice in going organic was simply to test whether or not the "fad" had any validity. Afterwards, I bought all of the produce I was currently eating as inorganic, and they each tasted wretched in different forms. Apples, pears, oranges, peaches, essentially most hand-fruits, produced a scalding sting in the throat after consuming 2 or more fruits in one sitting as well as a pungent scent in the back of the nose. Carrots tasted so strongly of gasoline that it prompted me to google the two terms, bringing me to the article I linked naming diesel fuel as an effective herbicide for use with carrots. Every food I ate labeled "conventional" produced a bitter, chemical taste which conjured sharp feelings nostalgia of when I was made to eat fruits and vegetables as a young boy. I realized that what I hated as a kid wasn't the vegetables themselves, but the chemical taste which I had no idea was due to chemicals my whole life. I also saw a distinct dip in my performance when training that night, however, while the discovery of the differences in taste was without any anticipation, I can't say the dip in performance was as well. Because of that, I had reason to question how real that observed dip in health was at the time.
"Placebo effect" is the first thing you should think, and you're right to think that way. I know it isn't only because of how unmistakable the difference in sensations between the two foods was as well as my continued experimentation with my diet, but that isn't information you can really prove to another person, as it's all sensory. That I was able to correctly guess what was on the carrots was also an indicator to me that it's not "in my head", as it were, but there are crazy people everywhere, and from your perspective, who's to say I'm not one of them? With the information you have now, you would have no reason to believe I'm not. An anecdote is proof of nothing outside of the experience of the one who tells it, after all, and I think that only a fool would take it on face value. Even still, you should understand that I have no reason to lie, at the very least.
Listen, I consider myself a scientist, and I admit that I say this with pride and ego. I have a physics degree from a well looked-upon college in America, and I'm well apprised of the way in which scientific studies are typically performed and reported, having done so myself on multiple occasions. That this is not anywhere near the standards of being a "scientific study" is painfully clear, especially when trying to use it in a debate like this, but I wouldn't say that means my findings and experiences aren't valid, at least to some extent. I do not have enough "ammo" to engage with you on the level this topic deserves, and that's because my investigation on the matter has been admittedly shallow and contained. The only way I see for you to understand my results is by recreating the experiment, and for all of this "study's" faults, ability to be easily reproduced is not one of them. Because of the consistently strong results I got in my own experiments, as well as how consistent my experiences were with others on internet forums (found after I had reached my conclusion), I'm more than confident in what I've found, but again, you shouldn't be until you try it yourself. Damn, I feel like I should apologize, as this is almost feels like a complete cop-out, but that's how and why things are.
