Source Your Food!

For all you Whole Foods shoppers in SoCo and beyond, I wanted to spread the word about where this chain buys many of its food products. This story was originally broke by the WJLA I-team last month in one of its many hard-hitting investigative stories. To see the TV story, click here.

If you do watch, I really like the brief editorial by WJLA anchor Leon Harris. As the story begins he ponders, “Would you believe organically grown…in China, how organic could that possibly be?” I was dubious about the off-the-cuff comment, but then I read his bio and it turns out he is a botanist and has penned several books on flora and plant pathology – who knew?

If you didn’t get it – I am joking.

Back to the story. It was pretty amazing to find out the myriad countries from which Whole Foods purchases a lot of its goods. To see the entire list that WJLA obtained and from which its story was based, click here.

This is definitely a list the company would much rather keep internal.

It is true that Whole Foods often times does list country/state of origin on many of its items. But this does not seem to be consistent. And I do applaud Whole Foods for expanding its inventory of local vegetables and helping support local farmers. But I think it’s mainly trying to compete with our SS Saturday Farmers Market.

I would recommend reviewing the entire list. Many of the items are not surprising – OK, coffee from Central America and tea from China. That’s expected. But as you make your way farther in to the list you see blackberries from Serbia, apricots from Turkey, and Whole Foods’ 365 Peanut Butter from China. C’mon, do we really have to go that far for these products? I’d be interested in finding out what it costs to ship the Chinese peanut better to the Whole Foods’ network of stores. There might be an argument for higher priced local/regional peanuts for the product and substantially lower shipping costs. And this certainly does not take into account the carbon footprint left behind on this item.

Well, I’ve gone on long enough here. But please take a look at the list. I think it’s empowering to find out the origins of the food we buy. If we don’t take the time to think about these issues now, it will be left to our offspring - who will likely be faced with an even bigger problem in the decades to come.