Choosing products carefully is important to your baby’s health. Learn about the wonderful products and stringent standards for body care in our stores. Whole Foods Market’s Senior Global Whole Body Coordinator, Jeremiah McElwee, has been working in the natural and organics products industry since 1994 and has been a devoted father since 2005.

According to Jeremiah McElwee, Senior Global Whole Body Coordinator, it is important to a baby’s health to choose products carefully:

• Baby skin is the most sensitive and helps regulate body temperature, hydrate, and protect internal organs.
• The skin is the largest detoxification organ in the body.
• Artificial colors, preservatives, and scents can cause irritation, especially for babies.

Premium body care is a standard developed by Whole Foods Market for our vendor partners:

• The premium body care standards make it easier to choose products like baby lotions, oils, powders, wipes and washes.

• Quality standards team evaluates every product to ensure it meets the premium body care standards.
• Criteria for evaluation include quality of source, environmental impact and safety.

There are many benefits to shopping at Whole Foods Market for your family:

• Whole Foods Market carefully monitors all the products and ingredients we select.
• Our team members are thoroughly trained and educated about the products we offer to help guide customers in making the most informed decisions.

I’m thrilled to announce that our new Whole Foods Market responsible packaging guidelines for nutritional supplements and personal care products went into effect on September 1st! Creating these guidelines has been a long time (2+ years) in the works, and we are walking our talk by switching to a 100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) content bottle for several store-brand supplements. Our 365 brand body care items are also in 50% PCR content HDPE (high-density polyethylene) bottles as well.

Look for the leaf symbol on our Whole Foods Market brand supplements, which indicates that the bottles are made from 100% PCR PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic. We expect to have all of our house-brand Whole Foods Market supplement products switched to PCR packaging by late 2010.

As a leader in sustainability, we know that post consumer waste recycled materials are the way to go. They require less energy and water to produce, and they generate far fewer greenhouse gases, while diverting reusable materials out of the landfill and reducing reliance on virgin petrochemicals.

In developing our new responsible packaging guidelines for nutritional supplements and personal care products, my team worked with 25 of our largest Whole Body product suppliers. The guidelines mandate that Whole Body suppliers reduce the use of plastic in product packaging, encourage the switch to glass when possible and limit acceptable packaging materials to those that are the most recyclable and/or feature the highest possible recycled content. We also utilized packaging experts in plastic, glass and paper mediums to help us define the most responsible path for product suppliers to take when designing their packaging.

All new Whole Body department suppliers must meet the packaging guidelines before their products can be sold in our stores. All current Whole Body vendors are encouraged to change their packaging to fit the new guidelines as soon as operationally possible.

It’s really been great to see how responsive our vendors have been in making changes to provide even more green options for our customers. And even more exciting still is that through the development process, we’ve been able to create a forum for vendors to share best practices, helping the whole industry move forward with the environment top of mind.

A huge thank you to everyone who has helped get us to this point, and let’s all keep moving forward together. Keep any eye out for the leaf!

So, without further ado, we are featuring the artist Mishka and his album Above the Bones – in our stores now through April. We asked Mishka to write something to you and here’s what he sent:

Hey, Whole Foods, thanks for carrying my new CD, Above the Bones. It was released on Feb 17th on Matthew McConaughey’s newly formed label, jk livin Records. Matthew and I worked with guitarist/producer Daryl Thompson for months in the studio to get it where we wanted it – and finally we created Above the Bones.

Since the album was released, we have been on tour and living off of road-food; I feel like when I walk into Whole Foods it’s like a sanctuary.

Even to go and look at the produce section is refreshing. I always feel a sense of relief when I hear that there is a Whole Foods in the city that we are playing as I know that I can always get something good and healthy to eat to keep me going. I also appreciate the alternative health products like herbal teas, vitamins and homeopathic remedies. As a singer performing nightly, I really appreciate it!

With Whole Foods becoming mainstream, it’s nice to see that it has generated a massive amount of awareness about healthy and organic food choices – and a medium for organic food producers to be In a way, Whole Foods has created a “consciousness” around healthy eating and organic food choices. Hopefully, one day, this will become the norm rather than the exception.

Check out Above the Bones and let us know what you think!

Ok, so this blog is actually a confession…Well a couple of confessions!

First off, a bit about Whole Foods Market that people may not know…We work REALLY hard!!! I think sometimes people think we are a bunch of crazy hippies that sell natural & organic food and in between hang out in the back room and eat tofu while sipping herbal tea. Well, actually we ask a lot of our team members at all levels of the company and because most of us are so passionate about what we do it is not uncommon for us to be working 50, 60, 70 hour weeks! In fact, I am writing this blog on a Sunday evening at 8:00pm actually as it was the only time I had to sneak it in to the normal workflow. So all of that work and long hours definitely creates the need for an occasional boost every now and then which leads to confession # 2…

I must admit I really love energy shots and quick fix products that give you a nice KICK, when you are about out of gas. And frankly, I have to tell you that caffeine, especially from natural sources has been a good friend to me lately as we all plug away on those long hours!

So, if you are like me and many of our team members then you will be as stoked as I was to try the new Guayaki Organic Energy Shot (GOES). It is the first ever certified USDA Organic energy shot and it is full of wonderful herbs and of course Yerba Mate so that it gives you a smooth burst of energy without a crash. We all have seen those energy shots at the convenience store that are full of artificial colors, preservatives and sweeteners and other junk that you wouldn’t give to an enemy let alone put in your body. Well, now you can get a super clean, super powerful shot when you check out at Whole Foods Market. By the way, they taste GREAT too, so good that Bevnet recently gave the GOES shots a 5 star rating on their site which is a big honor. Check them out when you need a lift!

Everyone is headed back to school! Parents get a reprieve while kids get on their schedule again. Since different parts of the country go back to school at different times, we focus on back to school for both August and September in Whole Body, and you’ll find some great products featured. Need a great vitamin? In August we highlighted New Chapter’s Every Kid Organic MultiVitamin. It is kind of like a Pixie Stix^TM except it is a supplement and made with organic sweeteners. The Goodness Grape flavor is exclusively available at Whole Foods Market!

In September we are featuring a full array of fun kid’s bath products from Aura Cacia. My daughter loves pumping the foamy body wash herself and playing with the bubbles. (Yes, that’s her in the photo!)

In addition to these featured products, all of our Whole Body departments have an amazing array of kid’s products for all ages and many of our stores are featuring notebooks and other back to school supplies from New Leaf Paper, which is a company that is changing the way we look at paper production. Did you know that by switching to paper made with post-consumer recycled content is a great way to reduce your environmental impact? Not only do you save trees, you save water, energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well. This is because making paper from waste paper is a less polluting and less resource intensive process than making paper from trees.

To see just how significant the environmental benefits are of using post-consumer recycled paper – look at the following case study.  In 2003, 960,000 copies of the Canadian Harry Potter books were printed on New Leaf EcoBook100.  By using 100% post-consumer recycled paper, instead of paper made with virgin fiber, they saved the following resources:

• 29,640 trees
• 633,557 kilograms of solid waste
• 47,007,044 litres of water
• 20,248 BTUs of electricity
  (195 years of electric power required by the avg US home)
• 1,215,443 Kilograms of greenhouse gases
  (3,900,000 kilometers equivalent driving the avg American car)

Environmental benefits are calculated based on research done by the Environmental Defense Fund and the other members of the Paper Task Force who studied the environmental impacts of the paper industry.  Contact the EDF for a copy of their report and the latest updates on their data.  Trees saved calculation based on trees with a 10″ diameter.   Actual diameter of trees cut for pulp range from 6″ up to very large, old growth trees. Home energy use equivalent provided by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., San Francisco.   Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), and Absorbable Organic Compounds (AOX).  Landfill space saved based on American Paper Institute, Inc. publication, Paper Recycling and its Role in Solid Waste Management.

Have a great school year!

Some of my favorites include: Dr. Hauschka SPF 20, Aubrey Organics Green Tea SPF 25 & California Baby SPF 30 Fragrance Free (for the little ones). For more information on summer sun protection check out this pdf of our Be Good To Your Whole Body brochure from June. Don’t forget to grab some Aloe Vera Gel too, just in case you do get burned, it is still the best for soothing sun-fried skin.

On another note, if you are like me with stress, travel and the general day-to-day chaos, you might not always eat enough vegetables or greens. This month we launched a great EXCLUSIVE product from the folks at Amazing Grass called Amazing Meal. There are 3 flavors (Original, Chocolate and Pomegranate-Mango) and it provides a power-packed punch with 3000mg of raw greens, a serving of protein, a blend of goji, maca, açaí and other antioxidant rich foods, complemented with a probiotics and a comprehensive enzyme blend. It is guaranteed to liven up your morning shake or give you a quick boost while on the run this summer.

Have fun!