Category: Distribution

Eat Well, Be Well: What We Eat and Who Supplies It

Supermarkets and big box stores offer nearly 50,000 – or more – products for us to choose from to feed ourselves and our families. A nation-wide analysis of U.S. grocery purchases revealed that highly processed foods make up more than 60 percent of the calories in food we buy, and these items tend to have more fat, sugar and salt than less-processed foods.

If we don’t understand the high cost of bad food – to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our economy – we will see life expectancy shorten, chronic diseases increase, and healthcare costs continue to spiral. Selecting locally grown and minimally processed food items – good food – can mean more healthful and nutritious food on your plate.

Good food in the time of climate change…

Just imagine – what if we could no longer import our food? Or bring it in from the “produce corridor” that extends from Mexico to British Columbia up and down Interstate 5? Or even get it from neighboring states or provinces? What we thought was science fiction, is turning out to be fact!

Big Food Snaps Up More Independents

It’s another dark day for all of us in the Good Food Movement.

Today it was announced that Campbell’s will buy Pacific Food, producer of organic and natural soups and broths, plant-based milks, and more. Last week, Hain Celestial snapped up Better Bean Company. More buy-ups and consolidations. More money, more power games.

Buy local? Why local? Time for the REAL story!

Getting our food from the farm to the consumer – the “supply chain” – is certainly not as simple as it was the past. Once upon a time, the consumer, his/her family, and the local community WERE the growers and a supply chain didn’t exist. Transportation from the field and barn to the kitchen was a matter of feet or yards, not miles. What once was a simple connection with one or two stops along the way, has become a spaghetti-like tangle of connections, links, and cross-links to get fresh fruits and vegetables to your plate.

Community Supported What? CSA, CSB, CSR, CSW, CSF?

Spend a little time in the presence of a local food advocate and you’ll hear a string of acronyms beginning with CS: Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), Community Supported Bakery (CSB), Community Supported Restaurant (CSR), Community Supported Winery (CSW), Community Supported Fishery (CSF). What is all this community support about and what do these programs really mean?

You get to decide what to eat, right?

We’re all busy people, and we can easily be overwhelmed by the bewildering array of products on the supermarket shelves. According to the FMI (Food Marketing Institute), the average supermarket today carries nearly 39,000 items. How those products make it to the shelf is something that most of us don’t know. Why is this product available and not another one? Who determines what it is that you get to buy?