Michael Franti is an American poet, musician, and composer. He is the creator and lead vocalist of Michael Franti & Spearhead, a band that blends hip hop with a variety of other styles including funk, reggae, jazz, folk, and rock. He is also an outspoken supporter for a wide spectrum of peace and social justice issues. And he is today’s guest blogger!
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!
Okay, we’re cheating a little this week and perhaps this post would be better named “What We’re Watching…” ’cause that’s been the preferred method of media consumption this week. A friend of mine reminded me of some excellent TED | Talks that I’d encouraged him to listen to a few months back.
But of course, as inspiring as these talks were, I was hungry for more and just yesterday, stumbled upon TED’s new lists, which allow users to order talks based on user ratings on criteria such as “most beautiful”, “most jaw-dropping”, “most ingenious” and “funniest.”
Pumpkin Carving 101
My neighborhood in Santa Cruz is the area Mecca for all things Halloween. We moved there in October of 2002 and I was mowing the front yard one day when a neighbor came by to introduce himself. He asked me if we knew about Halloween and how much candy did we buy. I said no and a 100-piece bag. He said we would need three times that much and he was right — 300+ kids and four super size bags of candy later and my family realized we were in Halloween heaven.
The 2005 backyard harvest My contribution to Halloween in our neighborhood is pumpkin carving — about 50 pumpkins every Halloween. In the last few years (in honor of the Whole Foods Market green mission), I’ve been composting and growing pumpkins too. I save the seeds from the best pumpkins and use the composted pumpkins from last year’s display to grow the new season’s crop. The process has this great circle of life element and worked well until I planted too many seeds one year and we couldn’t find our backyard for the summer – it turns out most pumpkin plants just keep growing if they get enough water and sun. I didn’t know that but my wife Erin now reminds me every spring.
Every week I see dozens of myths and misunderstandings about food and our company come across my desk, confused thoughts ranging from “Everything Whole Foods sells is organic” to “Canola oil is a secret poison” to “Whole Foods Market is owned by Paul Newman.” This is the first in a series of posts aimed at sharing - and clearing up - some of the more popular misunderstandings floating around out there. Through these examples, I’d like to illustrate the lengths we go to “do the homework” about natural foods and to make sure that there’s nothing in our products that you’d be surprised to find there. If you have any particular questions or topics you want to see covered, post a comment down below and let me know what you want to hear about.
Who we are and what we do
Look around near the doors of any one of our stores and you’ll likely find our commitment to “Selling the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products Available” painted directly on the wall. This promise, the first of our company’s core values, seems simple at first glance, but becomes complicated once you start to consider the words “natural” and “organic” and what they really mean. I’ll save “organic” for another post, but what does “natural” mean, and who decides? Well, we do, and we take the job very seriously.
Hear more about issues surrounding our food supply in this podcast interview from last August with Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini centered around his book, Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair.
About the only things sprouting up on lawns this summer in central Texas are “Alarm Stage Drought” signs. The grass is crispy, some trees feature the yellow hues of autumn, and county officials and parents will be closely monitoring the few fireworks used by neighborhood kids this year. Our typical blast-furnace-August weather started in mid-May this year, and we’ve not had more than a flirty little spatter of rain since. Our June was the hottest recorded in Austin since 1854, with an average high of 99.4 degrees. Even our scrappiest cur-dogs won’t go out in this year’s noon-day sun.
In a wide ranging interview posted to his blog Chews Wise, Samuel Fromartz, author of Organic, Inc: Natural Foods and How They Grew, talked to Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey about “the Wild Oats deal, rising food prices, the company’s soon-to-be-launched humane meat ratings system, and the prospects for sustainable seafood.” This is a great read for anyone interested in the natural foods industry and Whole Foods Market in particular. Make sure to read both parts of the interview.
Check out this 20 minute video of Mark Bittman’s talk at the EG (Entertainment Gathering) Conference from TED. (TED - Technology, Entertainment, Design - has a lot of great stuff from a wide variety of thought leaders.) TED describes this piece as “a fiery and funny talk” where “New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk.” Do you agree with Mark’s suggestions for necessary changes?
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.
Of course, what makes this blog really exciting is YOU — so join the conversation!
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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!
Every week I see dozens of myths and misunderstandings about food and our company come across my desk, confused thoughts ranging from “Everything Whole Foods sells is organic” to “Canola oil is a secret poison” to “Whole Foods Market is owned by Paul Newman.” This is the first in a series of posts aimed at sharing - and clearing up - some of the more popular misunderstandings floating around out there. Through these examples, I’d like to illustrate the lengths we go to “do the homework” about natural foods and to make sure that there’s nothing in our products that you’d be surprised to find there. If you have any particular questions or topics you want to see covered, post a comment down below and let me know what you want to hear about.
