When I wake up on cold mornings in the middle of winter, it’s hard to force myself to get out from underneath the warm blankets. Having a hot breakfast helps make the morning bearable. Did you know that skipping breakfast can contribute to weight gain because you end up snacking and eating larger meals later in the day? Without breakfast, you also may not be at the top of your game. A respected European study showed better performance and cognitive ability in people who ate carbohydrates with protein for breakfast. Other studies have shown that brain function in children who skip breakfast is drastically reduced by late morning.
So, we’ve been reading about breakfast! Here’s some solid info from our website: Breaking for Breakfast and our audio podcast celebrating February as Hot Breakfast Month.
Yeah, yeah, we know it’s not quite February yet, but we’re always ahead of the curve!
So, with breakfast on the brain, we bring you some healthy breakfast ideas from around the web. Read the rest of this entry »
At Jeremiah Cunningham’s Coyote Creek Farms, the chickens live outside and are allowed to fully express their nature as chickens because they can scratch in the earth for worms, bugs, and grubs to satisfy their natural need for animal protein. They also enjoy dust baths to keep themselves clean, socialize with their flock in uncrowded conditions, have fresh clean air to breathe and healthy sunshine for optimal health. Locally available at Whole Foods Market stores and select bakeries.
Just one of our local vendors who is out there doing right by their animals. Check your store for more great local vendors.
What’s that they say about necessity being the mother of invention? You guys have it down pat. I love picking up ideas from you that I can put into practice in my own kitchen and with my family. Below are my favorites from this week.
Each week we’ve been choosing customer tips to be featured in our weekly The Whole Deal™ blog post, and every chosen tip gets a $25 gift card. This weekly giveaway ends next week so this is our last call for tips. For the blog post next week, we are looking for value-focused tips for entertaining guests while watching the big football game next Sunday. If you have a great crowd-pleasing value tip, send it in!
Viv from Rockville:
My husband and I made a tradeoff when we had our son – I would be a stay-at-home Mommy and our income would drop drastically. We don’t regret that decision for a moment. Unfortunately, meat is expensive, and vegetarianism just doesn’t appeal to us. In order to stretch our meat dollars, I have learned to stretch the meat itself by adding fillers to my recipes. Ground meat recipes can be stretched with beans and grains…I often use a 50/50 ratio to meat, which cuts the meat cost per meal by 50%! Casseroles are a good friend to our food budget, too. Pasta, rices and veggies stretch chicken breast, tuna, and cubed beef much farther. It is possible to trim your food budget while feeding your family healthy, organic foods…you just need to be creative!
Elsa from Chicago:
Instead of buying fruit yogurts, I buy a tub of 365 Organic Nonfat Plain yogurt and either prunes or frozen berries and mix them together. I usually also add cereal crumbs. This is a great way to utilize leftover cereal crumbs and bits.
Rebecca from Birmingham:
To save money on trips we give our boys their own food money. Before we leave, we work up a reasonable budget per meal and give them the money up front. Then at each stop they can decide how much money they would like to spend, understanding that they get to keep anything they do not spend on food. We also carry a cooler full of nutritional options like fruit and veggies that are “free.” Not only do they suddenly love the healthy foods, but we save a bundle of money and heartache at each stop. There is no more begging for large amounts of fast food they cannot eat. It is amazing how frugal this teaches them to be.
There are few meals more comforting in the winter than a simple bowl of sautéed greens served with brown rice, and maybe a small piece of fish or chicken. Mustard is my favorite variety of green by far but I’m not picky in the winter – the cool weather makes the mustard greens supply a little harder to come by but it’s worth the trouble if you can find them. Winter greens grow slower and the cool weather gives them a deeper color and more robust flavor.
Great news for recyclers out there! Some of our Whole Foods Market stores are piloting a new program for recycling #5 plastic with Preserve called Gimme 5. If you don’t have the recycling numbers memorized (like me), #5 is commonly used in containers for yogurt, cottage cheese, hummus, medicine bottles, etc. I’m told that many communities don’t have recycling for #5 plastics and when it is collected, it’s often shipped to Asia to be burned as energy. Yuck! Oh yeah, as an added benefit, Gimme 5 also accepts Brita water filters for recycling. (Since water filters are all different, this is only for Brita.)
So here’s the deal. You bring your #5 plastics to a drop-off bin at our participating stores. (We’re starting with our stores in the Midwest, North Atlantic, Northeast and Northern California. Check for specific stores.) We’ll send the plastic to Preserve, who make recycled household products including toothbrushes, razors, tableware, and kitchen products. When they get it, the plastic is ground up and turned into clean plastic pellets. The pellets are then sent to Preserve’s manufacturing facilities to be transformed into new Preserve products. Obviously, when you choose to purchase Preserve stuff that closes the loop on the whole recycling chain. How cool is that?
Preserve Gimme 5 is supported by a partnership with Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm. Pats on backs all around. This whole program started because Preserve wondered: “Wouldn’t it be cool if more people could recycle their #5 plastic? They could just fill up their reusable shopping bags and drop off their #5s every time they go shopping at Whole Foods Market.” A Green Mission Team Leader in our Reston, Virginia store had the same good idea. Together they piloted the first Preserve Gimme 5 program and it worked! Store guests loved the bin and filled it with so much clean #5 plastic that Team Members emptied the bin three times a week. Preserve called their friends at Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm. Together, they agreed to fund a program that would make #5 recycling available at other Whole Foods Market stores.
Preserve hopes to expand Gimme 5 to more Whole Foods Market stores in the coming months. If your store isn’t on the list of current stores and you’d like to see it in your store, post a comment below and I’ll make sure the stores and Preserve get the message!
Who doesn’t like potatoes? We haven’t heard of anyone and frankly we’d be surprised if we did— especially after watching this week’s episode featuring Fingerling Potatoes! Shaped like stubby fingers and packed with flavor, fingerling potatoes come in many varieties, including Russian Banana, French, Austrian Crescent and Ruby Crescent, and are grown using heritage seed potatoes resulting in earthy potato goodness and hearty texture. Join guest chef Lee Anne Wong, from the French Culinary Institute and Bravo’s Top Chef, as she shares her super-easy roasted fingerling potato recipe with a quick buttermilk yogurt herb dressing.
As excitement bubbles for the inauguration of our 44th president, hordes of supporters are flocking to Washington D.C. to witness this historic event in person. If you happen to be in the area, check out one of our seventeen DC/Baltimore Metro area stores. Find your nearest store using our store finder.
Having a celebration of your own at home? We have some delightful recipes that we think will work perfectly – regardless of how you plan on celebrating.
And finally, what better way to top off the election season that lasted a lifetime than with an arugula-studded meal?! Start with a fresh and healthy Arugula Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash and then, as a main course, serve a rich and delicious dish like this Savory Fig and Goat Cheese Tart with Arugula. Certain to please Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Green Partiers and anyone else you might invite!
Happy eating and please do let us know what you plan on making come Tuesday!
Melina Jampolis of Dr. Melina is CNN’s new health and diet expert. She is a board certified internist and physician nutrition specialist (one of only 200 in US). She specializes exclusively in nutrition for weight loss and disease prevention and treatment.
She was the recipient of a Local Producer Loan from Whole Foods Market that aided her in rolling out her specially formulated protein bars and other products.
In her new role at CNN, she is advising people with a variety of diet and exercise related health concerns.
As mentioned on the Today Show, Justin’s Nut Butters are an excellent choice to keep on hand for healthy snacking. His nut butters are produced in small quantities from the highest quality natural and organic ingredients and come in convenient single serving packs for taking on the road, keeping at your desk in the office, throwing into your bag, etc.
Whole Foods Market in Boulder was Justin’s first retail outlet for his nut butters, and our Team Members have worked with him to grow his business. Justin’s Nut Butter can now be found in five of our eleven regions! He’s using his loan to expand his production of the single serving packs.
The whirlwind of the holidays (and my own post holidays travel schedule) have finally settled and in its wake, I find a messy house in desperate need of a good deep clean. Pots and pans in my sink, spots on all my mirrors and a sadly neglected wall-to-wall carpet are all weighing on my mind. Yet, somehow, I’m still using the excuse of an empty cleaning supplies drawer as an excuse to not take on these tasks. Thankfully, our wonderful customers and their helpful tips are giving me a bit of a kick start – vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice and essential oils? I have all those hanging around in my kitchen and bathroom and what better way to get clean than the natural way?
Remember, each week, we choose customer tips to be featured in our weekly The Whole Deal™ blog post. Every chosen tip gets a $25 gift card, so submit your tips and recipes here. Please note that this weekly giveaway will be ending at the end of this month on January 29th, so get your tips in soon!
From Holly:
here are just a few handy helpful hints: lemon juice removes stains from clothes as does the sun. salt works as a lovely scrubber when cleaning. vinegar and water can clean almost anything. baking soda is a great cleaner and deodorizer. adding a few drops of dishwashing liquid to a bucket of warm water will do wonders for linoleum floors. plus, your home will smell wonderful and your pocket book will thank you. also, my beautician told me, do not wash your hair everyday, washing will ruin it. wash every other day. anytime you can use cloth products as opposed to paper, please do.
Hey everyone! Just wanted to invite you all to the 4th Annual Teens Turning Green National Summit, which is coming up in Marin County, California on February 6th + 7th. Teens (and adults, too!) from around the country are invited to RSVP online and join us. It is all moderated by teen campaign members and will feature extraordinary “green” industry leaders. I already can’t wait; it will be an amazing and empowering two days that you will not forget. You will hear from inspiring teens and eco leaders about a variety of green issues including lifestyle choices, green chemistry, and the health impact of toxic chemical exposure in our daily lives. Even if you aren’t that into green body care or cosmetics, these issues apply to everyone and there is a topic or speaker that everyone will be interested in.
Welcome to Whole Story, the official blog of Whole Foods Market.
Don’t know us? In a nutshell, we are the world's leading natural and organic grocer and we’re passionate about healthy food and a healthy planet. Learn more about us.
We’re lucky to have a whole bunch of smart, passionate people doing incredible things in areas like organics, supporting local growers, green practices, fair trade, micro-lending and all kinds of food related stuff. We’ll use this blog to share some of the cool things going on around here.
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Great news for recyclers out there! Some of our Whole Foods Market stores are piloting a new program for recycling #5 plastic with Preserve called 
So here’s the deal. You bring your #5 plastics to a drop-off bin at our participating stores. (We’re starting with our stores in the Midwest, North Atlantic, Northeast and Northern California. Check for 
As excitement bubbles for the inauguration of our 44th president, hordes of supporters are flocking to Washington D.C. to witness this historic event in person. If you happen to be in the area, check out one of our seventeen DC/Baltimore Metro area stores. Find your nearest store using our 
