Well now, how did I miss this post!
From a guy who buys and sells and contracts for Organic grains and dry beans for a living, I'll put in my two bits.
There is a difference between Organic (legally meaningless) and Certified Organic ( lots of legal meaning backed up by inspections of your records, purchases, sales, and/or farming practices). Does something become healthy because you call it Certified organic? No. Organic sugar is just as void of vitamins as regular sugar for instance. What it does mean is that the chickens were raised differently without antibiotics and with organic feed and that the noodles are made with wheat that was certified organic (no synthetic fertilizer or synthetic sprays). I'm not sure Campbell soup fits this generality; but many organic companies ( like Any's Kitchen) really care about the health attributes of their products. There are way more vegetables in their soup than Campbell soup. It would be healthier even if they used conventional ingredients. I think this is likely why there is an association with health regarding organics with many people. But legalistically, it has only to do with how a raw ingredient is produced. There may also be a ban on such things as MSG, artificial coloring a etc, but I'm not privy to the rules on processed products. And by the way, our organic red bean growers yield just as much as their conventional counterparts. They even gripe if yields don't approach a ton and a half/acre. Hard red spring yields were as high as 123 bu/acre this year. I am seeing less and less of a yield difference as the years go by. Maybe we just have all the good growers, but I doubt it.
