Why not sprinkle organic soil on your vegetables?

It was one of the more unusual impulse buys to which I have succumbed. Maundering round a Yorkshire market town the other day, I saw a sign declaring "Dirty Carrots". Moments later, I was the proud possessor of a hefty bag of gnarled, muck-laden roots which resembled the devil's fingernails after a heavy day in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Not pretty, I know, but I salivated at the feast in store.

Back home, I set to work. It wasn't easy. Following a Time Team-style archaeological investigation, I finally uncovered the roots hidden in the clods. I then peeled, boiled, processed and anointed with butter. And, though it may sound a little immodest of me to say so, the result was a ne plus ultra of carrotiness.

But I may be wrong. A former Min of Ag man called Geoffrey Hollis insists that claims for the tastiness of organic grub are so much baloney. Seething at seeing his life's work in pesticide research being dissed by the organic lobby, he called in the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to investigate a Tesco booklet called Organic: As Natural As Nature Intended.

This made large claims that customers would "notice a difference in taste and texture" if they chomped the store's 530 organic lines. No, they jolly well wouldn't, the ASA announced yesterday. Tesco's assertions for the toothfulness of organics "went beyond puffery".

Pondering once more on my purée, I wondered if it was all that carroty after all. Surely, its earthiness, its sheer muckiness added in some profound way to the flavour? I haven't been labouring under an expensive illusion in recent years, have I? You expect to pay a surplus for organic vegetables, but it sometimes seems that I'm buying a largish amount of Lincolnshire along with my King Edwards or Kerr's Pinks. One recent purchase in the potato department - red Duke of York's, if my memory serves me correctly - turned out to contain more terra than tubers.

The washing process was more in the nature of disinterment. After bashing off the compacted loam that had penetrated every cavity, I was left with an alarmingly small quantity of spuds. Not that I got them too clean, of course. This was partly because boredom set in at an early stage, but mainly because of my adherence to the gospel of Sir Terence Conran.

You will recall that, much to the chagrin of his chefs and PR advisers, the great restaurateur recently said that excessive cleanliness is very bad for our immune systems. Go easy with that pan scrub!

Though the offending booklet insists that "organic farming is the environmentally friendly alternative to chemicals, fertilisers and pesticides", Geoffrey Hollis says it ain't so. According to this scourge of Tony Archer et al, the chemicals used in organic production include slag, crude potassium salt, insecticides such as the plant-based Derris dust and elemental sulphur.

Sulphur, eh? It seems I was nearer than I thought when I associated my carrots with the Devil.

If common or garden vegetables are little different to the organic kind, it follows that the improved taste we apparently detect must result from the psychological influence of the dirt that we are obliged to remove so painstakingly.

It seems to me that the perfect solution would be produce grown with the assistance of Mr Hollis's chemicals, which, after uprooting and cleaning, could then be given a top-dressing of finest organic loam in the comfort of your own kitchen.

No need for Derris dust, slag or crude potassium salt, since it's just the mind we're feeding here. Tesco could sell this irresistible condiment in small bags. "Just sprinkle it on and wash it off." They could even use their ingenious slogan without any interference from the advertising police. As Natural As Nature Intended. What could be more so?