While a lot of their information is specific to our Northern California stores, we thought this video they put together about shopping for gluten-free products for your kids had universal appeal. Remember: our product mix varies from store to store so the exact items in the video may not be available in your local store. Also, shelf signs and printed shopping lists vary. Check with your store’s customer service team members and they’ll be able to help you.

We’ve partnered with Chef Ann Cooper, a.k.a. “The Renegade Lunch Lady,” to help schools make a change. Chef Ann has already transformed the school lunch experience for tens of thousands of children across America by helping their schools switch from processed foods to fresh, natural ingredients and scratch-made meals.

Today – Friday, August 28 at 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST, Ann Cooper will be answering YOUR questions about school lunch reform and what you can do to help make simple, yet revolutionary changes to school lunch programs in your area.

Note: You must have a Facebook or Twitter account in order to submit questions, but anyone can watch the live chat video on Facebook.  Check out the link below for more information on how to participate.

Participate in the live chat on Facebook

Big news: We just announced that our 273 U.S. stores have been certified organic by CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers). Those of you who’ve been paying attention know that we’ve been a certified organic retailer since 2003 – a voluntary certification that’s not required by the USDA. So what’s the big deal now? Well, last November, the USDA told us that it was about to get much harder to be a certified retailer. Rather than walk away from certification altogether, we opted to go down the much more difficult road of getting each of our stores individually certified. The USDA was right: it was much harder. But we did what it took and made it happen. That’s the news.

Here’s a bit of context. When USDA’s National Organic Standards went into effect in 2002, they defined organic in great detail, down to the specific substances that could be used, and required that everyone who handles organic food – growers, ranchers, processors, etc. – be certified by a USDA-approved third party organic certifier. Everyone, that is, except retailers. Huh? Yes, the whole supply chain for organic products must be certified, with the tiny exceptions of retailers and restaurants. These exceptions were made because they thought it would have been prohibitively difficult and expensive for all the retailers that carried unprotected organic food to get certified (by “unprotected” I mean unpackaged, like produce, meat, bulk grocery, etc.). So the USDA told retailers that they still had to follow the rules, but they wouldn’t have to be certified. And we told the USDA something to the effect of “So you think it’s too hard for retailers to get certified? We’d like to respectfully prove you wrong.”

And we did. In 2003, Whole Food Market became the first national certified organic retailer, joining a few other small retailers that didn’t have national scope. Since we were certified as a “group,” our certifier inspected a representative sampling of our stores along with our overall company policies and systems for monitoring compliance. This is the same group process used for farm collectives where many small farms are grouping their product together. In November 2008, the USDA told retailers that they could no longer be certified as groups, and that each individual store would have to be inspected. While this was more expensive and labor intensive, we signed up all of our stores for inspection because we believe the integrity it brings the “organic” label is so important.

As part of the transition in the certifying process, we chose to work with California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) as our certifier. They have been certifying organic farms and producers since 1973 and act as both a certifying agent and a non-profit advocacy group for organics. The people we work with at CCOF are visionary leaders in organics, and they truly share our view that the organic label should be meaningful and used with integrity.

So, are you wondering exactly what these inspectors do in our stores? They are looking at our practices that involve unpackaged organic products. Obviously, you don’t need to do much to make sure a box of organic cereal stays organic. But we do have a lot to do when it comes to produce, bulk, meat, bakeries, cheese and even some salad bars. Here are just a few examples:

• The rules don’t allow “commingling” or touching between organic and non-organic foods. Throughout the stores, we go to great lengths to ensure that organic and conventional never touch.
• When sanitizing a surface that touches food – knives, cutting boards, displays, bins – we’re required to completely remove any sanitizer residue, and our team members keep written logs showing that they’ve removed cleaner and sanitizer from food contact surfaces.
• Whether it’s from a small local grower or a larger farm in another state, our organic produce has to come from certified organic growers. CCOF makes sure we have current certification documentation for any unpackaged products we’re handling and selling.



• Every team member who handles organic food needs to understand what the standard requires, so we’ve designed training programs to help. (These include a sing-along video about sanitation practices, and a video game called “The Organic Avengers,” with villains named “The Contaminator” and “The Commingler.” I am not joking; just ask any team member!) The certifier verifies that our teams are well-trained and have the knowledge they need to uphold the standard.

Again, I just want to reiterate that this program is not required by the USDA, and few other retailers go to the effort to become certified. Our stores are certified organic to give our customers more trust in the organic label. For us, it’s important for you to know that everyone who handles your organic food has been certified – instead of everyone but the retailer.

Why am I grinning ear-to-ear on this steamy hundred-degree day in the middle of Texas? The reason is this press release, which announces our commitment to the Non-GMO Project and represents the culmination of a very long and complicated undertaking. I’ve been working on this project – helping the company come up with a way to truly verify our efforts to avoid Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in our private label products – for just over five years, and it would be an understatement to say that I’m ecstatic about this announcement. I’d even go so far as to say that this moment makes me extremely optimistic about the future of our food supply and the persistence, energy and integrity of the natural and organic food visionaries who propel our industry forward.

What’s a GMO?

It’s simple: scientists combine the DNA of a plant with the DNA of something else and create a novel organism that has heretofore not existed in nature. The companies who make and sell the bioengineered crops will tell you all about the “exciting potential” of these crops to end hunger and create radical new super-nutritious foods. In reality, the GMO crops currently approved and marketed in the United States do one of two things: (1) make their own pesticides or (2) resist herbicides, so that farmers can spray an entire field with a strong chemical herbicide and kill everything but the GMO crop. Most of the U.S. corn, soy, canola and cotton is grown using one of these two technologies.

Why do we care?

Among Americans who are even aware that there are GMOs in the food supply (less than 50%, according to one study), prevailing beliefs about GMOs range from “They’ll save the universe” to “They’re utter toxic poison.” The topic is obviously very controversial, but what Whole Foods Market knows for certain is that our customers have told us very clearly that they’d like to avoid GMOs in their food. In fact, in a poll we conducted just last month, more than 80% of those we surveyed said they would seek out non-GMO products with clear labeling and would be willing to pay more for these products. Bioengineering of food is, for many, simply inconsistent with the very basic idea of natural food. We’re drawing a very important line in the sand and supporting shoppers looking to avoid GMOs.

What’s the Non-GMO Project?

Early on in this initiative, we realized that we couldn’t do this alone. Creating a standard and a program to verify products as avoiding GMOs would take an incredible level of technical expertise, and it would take the participation and commitment of other retailers, food makers, certifiers and growers in order to even get off the ground. About three years ago, we learned about a group of retailers who shared our concerns about GMOs and were already working on the issue, as we were. They had formed a non-profit organization called the Non-GMO Project. The tenacity and energy of these early supporters – Good Earth Natural Foods, The Natural Grocery Company, The Big Carrot Natural Food Market, and others – gave the Non-GMO Project its start, and we were happy to join the project as a founding leader, along with a number of other natural food companies. Learn more about the Project’s early history here. With the incredible leadership and technical expertise of our Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Board, we created a standard and a system for keeping GMOs as far from the natural food industry as possible.

How will this affect my life as a shopper?

You’ll start to see the “Non-GMO Project Verified” seal on products in our store starting this fall. We are going to enroll our house brands – 365 Every Day Value and Whole Foods Market – in the project. In fact, a few products are already verified. A number of other manufacturers, including Eden Foods, Nature’s Path Organic and Lundberg Family Farms, have also had products verified under the standard. You can see the full list on the Non-GMO Project website.

Since they were first introduced, GMO crops have expanded continually so that they now make up an astonishingly large portion of American agriculture, and we know that they’re just plain inconsistent with what we and the people who shop with us want. The Non-GMO Project’s success is critical to the continued availability of non-GMO products in the U.S., and we hope you’ll join us in showing your support.

Consider signing up for the Project’s Consumer Pledge and becoming a fan on Facebook to stay up-to-date. To other retailers and food makers reading this, visit the site to learn how you can support the Non-GMO Project as well. Our success depends on the support of retailers, food makers, growers, shoppers and everyone with an interest in keeping natural food natural. Join us!

Ludicrous yes. True no. We’d have to be insane to push for weaker organic standards. A strong standard gives food shoppers something to trust. The “organic” label represents a strong regulation that ensures the food is grown without toxic and persistent chemicals on environmentally friendly farms. We fought hard for decades to get that regulation established and the last thing we’d want to do is jeopardize its value by chipping it away.

A small and passionate group of people who wanted to create a natural and organic alternative to the mainstream conventional grocery stores of the era opened the doors of our first tiny store 30 years ago, about four blocks from where I’m sitting now. Since day one, we’ve supported organic agriculture, and we now offer more organic products than our founders could have imagined back in 1980. And we add more and more year after year. Here are some basic facts about our commitment to organic:

• We offer more organic products and devote more space in every store to organic food than any other supermarket.
• Since 2005 we have seen our sales of organic produce increase by more than70%.
• For produce alone, we work with more than 1,000 certified organic producers.
• Since our beginning, we have done more than any other retailer to support and grow organic agriculture in the U.S. Every single year, we have increased the amount of organic products that we sell.
• Everything we sell that is not organic must pass our own strict quality standards, and we sell both natural AND organic products because our customers want us to, and because not all products are available as organic.
• We define “natural” foods in our stores as products that meet our quality standards. These standards are the product of decades of research and aren’t the least bit vague about what ingredients are allowed in our stores.
• We have always pushed for strong organic standards and will continue to work actively to ensure that the integrity of the USDA label is not diluted. Strong national standards make it easier for Americans to trust the meaning of the organic label.
• We helped create the National Organic Standards, and we served from 1995 to 2000 as the retail representative on the National Organic Standards Board.
• We are the first national certified organic grocer, becoming certified in 2003. Even though the organic standards don’t require retailers to be certified, we decided to open the doors of each of our stores to inspections by USDA-accredited certifying agents, who make sure that what we’re selling as organic is truly organic.
• Whole Foods Market will continue to take an active role in ensuring that the USDA definition of “organic” matches the expectations of our shoppers. I personally attend nearly every meeting of the National Organic Standard Board, the stakeholder group that advises the USDA on organic agriculture. We carefully monitor any proposed changes to the regulation and work actively to make sure that the standards continue to represent a clear, strong definition of organic.

Speaking of Washington, it is an extremely happy time for organics at the USDA. You’ve probably heard about Michelle Obama’s garden on the White House Lawn, but have you heard of the organic “People’s Garden” at the USDA? Creating an organic garden at USDA was one of the first acts of new Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and it serves as a very tangible representation of an unprecedented commitment to organic at the USDA. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan – #2 at the USDA – is one of the country’s foremost experts on organic agriculture. She helped author the Organic Foods Production Act and the National Organic Standards during her time as a congressional staffer, USDA administrator and National Organic Standards Board NOSB member, and most recently directed the graduate program in food policy at Tufts University. She has voiced her intention to make organic an integral part of all USDA programs, and to increasing enforcement of the organic standard. Leadership like this at the USDA is going to lead to a better-funded and more efficient National Organic Program and enable organic agriculture in the U.S. to seriously flourish.

Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables — Certified Organic Growers

Before 2002, there was no national legal definition of organic. Outside of the few states that had regulations, anyone could sell anything as organic without regulation of the agricultural practices they used. The national organic standards we have now are a huge step beyond the unregulated wilderness we had before, and it’s in all of our interest – retailers, growers, manufacturers and consumers – to stand together and make sure that definition stays strong. Undermining the standard serves no one.

Whole Foods Market is at the heart of organics, always has been and always will be.

If you’ve got questions about our support of organics, let me know and I’ll do my best to get ‘em answered.

FOOD, Inc. takes a peek into the supply chain of much of the food we eat and talks about the consequences of the way food is currently grown, raised and processed. Consequences like deadly new strains of E.coli, epidemic obesity, type II diabetes, pollution from pesticides and feedlots, and the effect this system has on people in the industry. Although this subject matter sounds both complicated and mind-numbing, FOOD, Inc. presents the information in an engaging and interesting way. I know that many of our shoppers are aware of the issues and concerns of the current industrial agriculture system and that they shop with us because we offer an alternative. I thought I would share some of the things in the film that I found compelling, and how we do things differently at Whole Foods Market.

For me, one of the most jarring aspects of FOOD, Inc. was the perspective on how the patenting of Genetically Modified (GMO) seed has changed farmers and those in the agriculture business. The film looks at how Monsanto’s GMO crops have affected people like seed cleaner Moe Parr, who was sued by Monsanto for something as seemingly innocuous as saving seeds. Seed cleaners go to farms at the end of every planting season and clean seeds so they can be saved and planted the following season. This seems innocent enough, but since Monsanto owns the patent to their seeds, it is illegal to save them and farmers must buy new seed from Monsanto to plant the following season. Even if a farmer did not plant a Monsanto crop, farmers are held liable if cross-pollination occurs and patented seed or plants are found in the farmer’s possession. Parr was sued by Monsanto and fought them in court until he could no longer pay his legal fees.

Whole Foods Market has long been concerned with the effects of GMOs, and we have partnered with the Non-GMO Project, a non-profit organization created by leaders in the organic and natural products industry to develop an industry-wide non-GMO product standard that will allow us and other manufacturers to verify that products are non-GMO. We also formulate our Exclusive Brands products to avoid GMO ingredients and we champion organic products, which by law cannot include GMO ingredients.

FOOD, Inc. also looks at the cheapness of processed foods and how that is affecting the health of our country. The film follows one family through the drive thru and to the grocery store, where they opt not to buy broccoli because it is cheaper to buy a large bottle of soda. The family talks about the hundreds of dollars they spend on the father’s medication for diabetes and other health issues, and they see the correlation between nutrition and health, but they feel they can feed their kids more food for less money by buying dollar menu hamburgers and soda, and so they don’t see a way out. Trust me, this had me feeling sad and scratching my head. At Whole Foods Market we’re committed to the idea that you don’t have to spend a lot to eat well. Our stores offer value tours to teach customers how to shop on a budget, and our Whole Deal program offers money-conscious recipes, coupons and the items we feel are Sure Deals – the best deals in the store.

The film also addresses meat production, and our shoppers always tell us that one of the most important issues to them is the way our meats are raised. At Whole Foods Market we are passionate about animal welfare, and we have worked hard to develop rigorous standards for our meats that have taken into account the comfort, physical safety and health of the animals. The poultry and meat we sell are raised without being administered antibiotics or added growth hormones. Through on-farm visits, we collect and verify information from all of our producers about raising and handling practices, feed, facility design, environmental conditions, employee training, medical practices and animal welfare at the farm, in transportation, and throughout processing. We offer both grain-fed meats and grass-fed alternatives.

At Whole Foods Market, we are all about choices. FOOD, Inc. lifts the veil on a number of issues in the food industry, and whether you resolve to eat locally, organically, non-GMO or just healthier, we are proud to offer quality food choices that you can trust, as my Team Leader Margaret always says, “whatever your food trip!”

Once you see Food, Inc. let us know what questions it brings up for you. Enter a comment below and we’ll work on addressing them in future posts.

Here’s mine: Hats off to NMFS for addressing these critical issues! Together with my colleague, Margaret Wittenberg – Global Vice President of Quality Standards and Public Relations, we’ve submitted comments to NMFS letting them know that Whole Foods Market cares about sourcing seafood sustainably and minimizing the impacts of fishing on the marine ecosystem. To source seafood right, though, we need strong regulations that address illegal fishing because as a grocery store, we can’t police the oceans.

We’re urging our fishery managers to do everything possible to provide the tools necessary to help us avoid sourcing from fisheries that catch fish illegally or take protected species. For example, denying port privileges to nations fishing illegally and prohibiting the import of fish products in violation of these rules would be a huge step forward; it would put the onus of responsibility on nations to fish responsibly, rather than on a grocery store like Whole Foods Market to figure out who is fishing legally and who isn’t. Finally, there may be fisheries that operate legally within a country that is found to be engaging in illegal fishing in other sectors. Consequently, we agree with NMFS’ approach to have alternative certification procedures that allow products to be certified on a shipment-by-shipment or shipper-by-shipper basis.

If you’d like to submit comments yourself, the deadline is May 14, 2009 and details can be found on Federal Register Docket No. 070514119-81404-02 (pdf).

You can read the full letter (pdf) that Whole Foods Market submitted to NMFS.

What do you think? Let us know and, more importantly, let the NMFS know!

“Organic” started out as a very informal set of ideas and practices based around the belief that agriculture should be done without toxic chemicals using environmentally beneficial methods. As organic grew throughout the 1970s and 80s, a number of standards emerged. Non-profit groups and state governments, in order to ensure shoppers were getting what they paid for when they bough “organic,” began to carefully define organic. As these various standards emerged, and demand for organic grew, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, which directed the USDA to work with growers, certifiers, food producers, and the public to create a single national organic standard. Over the next twelve years, the USDA’s National Organic Program and the National Organic Standards Board (an advisory board made up of growers, certifiers, academics, consumers and industry representatives) worked to create a detailed, strong standard that would ensure that organic products met consumers’ expectation that they be produced without toxic chemicals, using earth-friendly methods. Our Vice President of Quality Standards, Margaret Wittenberg, served as the sole retail representative on the NOSB during this time. The USDA’s National Organic Standards were released in 2002, and represent one of the strongest governmental organic standards in the world. You can read more about those standards on our website.

“Natural,” on the other hand, doesn’t have a strong governmental definition when it comes to food, so my team (the Quality Standards Team) spends quite a lot of time defining which ingredients make up the natural foods we sell in our stores. The basic tenets of our standard require that our products are free of artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners and hydrogenated fats. Getting to that point requires lots and lots of research on individual ingredients. The piles on my cluttered desk are made up of a lot of technical documents about food ingredients – food science textbooks and reference books, ingredient specifications that describe how an individual ingredient is made, governmental and regulatory documents from around the world, and dozens of very messy legal pads.

I’ve heard our role described as that of an editor - carefully “reading” the product selection and crossing out lines that don’t belong there – or as a gatekeeper - guarding the gates of our castles and fighting off the evil artificial ingredients attempting to invade. Both of these definitions are okay, but they don’t capture a few key features of what we do. First, since our products are picked out by hundreds (if not thousands) of buyers throughout our company, we function more as an army of editors or gatekeepers. And since our structure is so decentralized, our biggest responsibility is to empower the stores and teams that make up our company with information and tools they need to effectively edit the product selection, guard the gates and ensure the products in each of our stores meet our standards.

One of the most simple and important tools we give our team members is a list of ingredients, each marked acceptable or unacceptable. This list covers most of the food ingredients on the market and represents significant research into where it’s from, how it’s made, and what our stance is. For every ingredient reviewed, we try to answer: “Is this something that our shoppers would expect to find in a natural food?”

Some ingredient reviews are very straightforward. Artificial colors are banned, as are artificial flavors and preservatives. Preservatives such as citric acid – which is naturally derived – are acceptable, whereas preservatives like BHA and BHT – which are very clearly synthetic – are banned.

Other reviews get more complicated. L-cysteine is an amino acid that is used as a dough conditioner in bread products. Even though it’s a natural substance, we said no to it because it’s simply not necessary. It allows bread bakers to cut corners and replace traditional kneading and dough conditioning practices with an additive. We believed this was an unnecessary ingredient that our customers would be surprised to find in our products, so it got stamped “unacceptable.”

For another class of ingredients, we allow them but place additional requirements on how the ingredient label reads, so that our customers know what they’re getting. Lysozyme is a natural egg white-derived enzyme that’s added to certain foods. It’s natural and it’s safe, but we felt that the name “lysozyme” doesn’t make it clear that the product contains egg ingredients, which is important information to vegans and others who avoid egg products. Accordingly, we require that it be listed as “Egg white lysozyme” on the product label.

Another great example is caffeine. It’s naturally occurring in coffee, among other plants, and is occasionally used to give a boost to other beverages. Since it’s a natural substance, we consider it acceptable, but when it comes to energy drinks, we limit the amount and ask that the label give you clear information about what you’re getting. The level of caffeine is capped at 150 mg per serving (about what you’ll find in a strong cup of coffee), the front of the label must clearly state that the product contains caffeine, and the actual amount of caffeine, in milligrams, must be stated on the label. In other words, energy drinks need to make it clear that they’re energy drinks and not just soda. Natural energy drinks aren’t for everyone, and we wanted to make sure that you know what you’re buying before you (or your kids) end up with an unwanted caffeine buzz.

These are just a few varied examples illustrating how we create our food quality standards. Stay tuned for future posts on other examples of the work our Quality Standards team does and let us know if there’s a particular topic you’d like to see explored.

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, she hit me with this bombshell: Could you use the first post in the series to explain our Quality Standards in a way that an 11-year-old can understand? What!?

Seems that she was in our downtown Austin store over the weekend with her daughter’s 11-year-old friend, who had never been to our store before. She was thoroughly enthralled and amazed – remember your first step inside our store? Anyway, the friend asked, “Is everything here organic?” and Paige said “no” but that everything was natural. And then fumbled through various attempts at explaining what natural means – realizing as she rambled that a typical 11-year-old doesn’t have the background to understand how much junk is in our conventional food supply. Paige eventually came up with this: “You won’t find blue ketchup here because ketchup comes from tomatoes and tomatoes aren’t blue in nature.” And the friend got it: “So, ketchup is red here?” Yes.

I am so immersed in food and agricultural issues that I’m guilty of forgetting that there are many people who come to our stores without the abundance of food-related details that I deal with every day. We all have so much going on, who has time to delve into all the details unless it’s part of your job? So, I’ll take the challenge. Give me a minute to dust off my old nursery-school teacher skills (in a former life I taught at a tiny nursery school, a job which included managing the library of children’s books). An 11-year-old should be able to understand what makes Whole Foods Market different. Here goes. Welcome to Quality Standards Storytime.

Once upon a time there were only natural foods. I know this is obvious, but one of my most strongly-held beliefs about food is that we should pay attention to the diets that humans have followed for 200,000 years or so. Our bodies and brains evolved on a diet of unprocessed foods — mostly plants and nuts, some animal protein and very little else. The 50-100 years since the advent of food processing and artificial preservatives occupies about .05% of that timeline. I think it’s fairly logical to play it safe and stick to the diets that have proven safe and healthful for most of recorded time.

Then, sometime in the twentieth century, Artificial Preservatives, Colors and Flavors were invented by “food scientists,” devoted to improving the quality of our lives through science. The ability to color, flavor and preserve food indefinitely made it possible to recreate authentic-seeming foods and make them last virtually forever. Chicken flavoring with no actual chicken, snack cakes able to survive for 20 years, and that infamous blue ketchup all became possible. With modern food science, we became able to replicate and “improve upon” traditional natural foods, and make fake food products more cheaply than the authentic original.

The Organic and Natural Products movements were born in opposition to these changes, based on the belief that natural food is healthier, better for you and better tasting. As the conventional grocery industry got weirder and weirder, the group of resisters got bigger and bigger. Whole Foods Market was born out of that opposition, founded in 1981 as a natural alternative to mainstream grocery stores. Organic agriculture also followed a similar route, rising as a resistance movement to chemical/industrial agriculture during the 1970s and 80s.

While organic and natural come from similar roots, the word “organic” has come to describe the way that agricultural products are grown, raised and processed – without toxic or persistent pesticides and using environmentally friendly practices. “Natural” focuses more on how a multi-ingredient processed food is made and whether the specific ingredients are consistent with our definition of natural. Natural products can include both organic and non-organic agricultural products. Both of these approaches spring from similar perspectives, with a few key differences (and I’ll write more about those in future posts).

In a nutshell (actually, in an office building), the Quality Standard Team creates standards for the ingredients in the food in our stores, and ensures that what we say we do (”Offer the highest quality natural and organic foods”) matches up with what we actually do, with what’s actually on our shelves. I’ll get into some of the specifics in future posts, along with some of the notable myths and misconceptions about natural food. If there’s a particular topic you’d like us to delve into, let me know.

So, how did I do in making this clear enough for an 11-year-old? What did I miss? What would you say? Would love to hear your feedback.

Back in the late 80’s, I hopped in a van with my band mates. Sleeping on floors across America, eating at truck stops, or on some lucky nights, enjoying a plate of tour spaghetti made with love and generosity by the people who loaned us their couches for the night. Eating healthy on the road took a bit of creativity back then. Often the most nutritious meal at a truck stop (filled with processed nacho cheese dip, soda pop and candy) was a can of sardines and some saltine crackers (which I would trade off with the occasional peanut butter and crackers). A truck stop salad was a wedge of iceberg lettuce smothered in thick Thousand Island dressing with a tomato slice and an olive thrown on top. Sometimes the only way to make my own “salad” was to order a burger with all the fixings and just eat the fixings!

As the years passed, I started to notice more and more mom and pop food co-ops opening across the country. I could not only find nutritious (and yummy) locally grown foods, but also the coolest feature in any food co-op….the bulletin board! The bulletin board in any organic store is the pulse of the community. You can find Yoga, massage, concert listings, bookstores, used van parts (crucial for a touring band), community political information and even lost cats. Despite the immediacy of the Internet, I still go straight to the organic food store bulletin board to find out really what’s happening in any town I find myself in.

Thankfully, organic, locally grown and nutritious food is becoming more accessible everyday across America and in every country I travel to in the world. That’s good news for people and for the planet. As someone who spends many months a year on the road, it made me think hard about ways that we could make our tours be less harmful to the planet. We started using bio diesel fuel for our tour buses, stainless steel water bottles for ourselves and our crew, and ceramic plates (or biodegradables) backstage. We also purchase carbon offsetting for our flights and ask that all venues we play provide recycling bins in the house and in the backstage areas. This movement is spreading across the music community and thanks to the encouragement of concertgoers many of the venues we play at are working year round to lessen their carbon footprint as well.

I feel that it’s imperative that we all work together. Farmers, retailers, consumers, businesses and families need to support and encourage each other to do what we can to keep the wheels turning in the right direction. So thanks for all you do to support locally grown, delicious and nutritious FOOD and MUSIC!

A healthy planet is a happy planet!

Be peace, Michael Franti

Check out Michael’s latest album, All Rebel Rockers in our stores right now!