Greenville, SC just got a Whole Foods Market and it is amazing! I was interested to see how many people shop at Whole Foods Market as well. Ill try and get some pictures up if anyone is interested.
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Whole Foods Market
- Thread starter Rangerhall6
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We primarily shop at Trader Joe's, and go to WFM instead of the local mega chains every few weeks for the few things we can't get at TJ. If our town's farmer's market was not at an inconvenient time, we'd buy more there than Whole Foods.
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There is one by my house. My grandfather likes to shop there. I've had a few things from there and I'm not that impressed. I can't wait for this organic fad to pass.
It really depends on how/what you eat, for people on special diets it can be much cheaper than a chain since they carry many products that are designed to meet these vegan, vegetarian, food allergy diets which tend to be much less available and expensive when purchased at a "regular" supermarket.igucl said:
Anyhow the expense of some more basic things is why we buy most of our staples at TJ, it's generally cheaper than WFM and even the mega chains for things like milk and eggs.
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I'm reading a very interesting book. Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma: A history of four meals." The mega-industrialization of food since WW II is a major source of the health troubles we face in the US and are spreading it to the rest of the world.grapes911 said:
Anyhow, the question is would your grandfather recognize what you eat as food?
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Oh, definitely. Here is an example. He was coming over for diner and my mom was making pasta with homemade sauce which my mother normally make incredibly. She asked him to pick up vermicelli (my favorite pasta). Unknown to me he purchased natural vermicelli at Whole Foods. During diner I gently told my mom that the pasta was terrible and I wondered what she did different. She told me it was the natural vermicelli and she hated it too. Actually, everyone but my sister and my grandfather hated. it. This wasn't the only time I had a bad experience from food at WFM.balamw said:
I think there are better organic markets, but they're also smaller and fewer in numbers. I like New Leaf a lot, but there's also the Food Bin (I think there's only one and it's in Santa Cruz). Whole Foods is nice and all, but is is overpriced and Trader Joe's does offer a lot of comparable foods for much cheaper.
we get most of our groceries there
the only thing that is not always up to par is their cheese...they slice them into small sections and certain types of cheeses dry up very fast and get stale
but a soft cheese like brie is fine in small sections and keeps soft on the display for a pretty good time...avoid medium hard cheeses as some of them turn into hard cheeses
the only thing that is not always up to par is their cheese...they slice them into small sections and certain types of cheeses dry up very fast and get stale
but a soft cheese like brie is fine in small sections and keeps soft on the display for a pretty good time...avoid medium hard cheeses as some of them turn into hard cheeses
devilot said:
those are better and in santa cruz (northern californina), but that's too far for us to travel for groceries
grapes911 said:
Please don't think that because "natural pasta" was so bad that defines what organic food can be. That pasta, I'm guessing, was probably made from whole wheat flour. It's dreadful and I can't see how anyone could eat that, natural or not.
On the other hand, take a farmer growing wheat, instead of loading his crops with pesticide and over farming his land, he grows a smaller crop without the use of chemicals. His wheat is then ground into flour and sold to a pasta factory where they make pasta. You will taste no difference from this pasta and your run of the mill pasta. The difference is there is no pesticide in your meal, no pesticide run-off into the water, and crops that are good for the land because of being properly rotated.
Its like saying "I don't eat health food because sprouts and wheat grass juice are nasty". That is ignoring the fact that just eating an apple is healthy, or grilling chicken is healthy.
njmac said:
I'm not just basing it off this one time. I said I had other experiences and here are some: I didn't like the baby carrots, I didn't like the like the lunch meat, I didn't like the cheese, I didn't like the bread. I did like the tomatoes though. There have just been more things I don't like from there than things I do like.
devilot said:
That's fair. I actually did try the small organic markets here, but the quality was too poor. All the fruits and vegetables were spottled, wilting, and nasty to me. So my trade-off was that non-organic food of reasonable quality was preferable to poor-quality organic food...
mkrishnan said:That's fair. I actually did try the small organic markets here, but the quality was too poor. All the fruits and vegetables were spottled, wilting, and nasty to me. So my trade-off was that non-organic food of reasonable quality was preferable to poor-quality organic food...
do they ship them from somewhere else? like from california?
a lot of what i see at whole foods or other organic markets in california are grown here locally in california and are fresh...so i guess i am lucky that way
jefhatfield said:
See, that's the thing that I'm having a hard time figuring...why was the quality of produce better in Michigan in the Winter, than in it is in Florida?
In Michigan, Whole Foods always managed to have outstanding vegetables and fruit. And I was happy.
Here, the big chains seem to do a fair job of having good vegetables and produce (not organic, but good in aesthetic qualities and freshness, and fair in flavor). And the organic stores, which, as far as I know, buy locally, do a terrible job, at least to me. The produce is aesthetically unappealing, and not very tasty.
And that doesn't make any sense to me....
grapes911 said:
I don't blame you for not being impressed with Whole Foods, there are some that are really bad. I was supposed to buy stuff for a cookbook I was doing the food styling for and whole Foods had some terrible looking stuff - the worst being the bread and fish.
I was just trying to point out that its not the organic fad that's bad necessarily, but things like the whole grain pasta that give "natural" a bad rap.
I have a feeling that Whole Foods, like Starbucks before it, were on to something but then became too big to maintain a quality.
If you want milk that is hormone and antibiotic free, humane towards the cows (yet still tastes the same), you have to go with small producers. If suddenly these supermarkets were only selling this type of milk, then some thing has to give. (At Whole Foods, I believe they use milk from milk "factories" that are not free roaming, grass-eating, and are given grains with pesticides but aren't given hormones) There just are not enough mom-and-pop dairies to buy huge quantities from.
grapes911, I would stay away from Whole Foods too if I were you, just don't pass by a farmer's market or a local farm thinking that everything will be bad.
mkrishnan said:That's fair. I actually did try the small organic markets here, but the quality was too poor. All the fruits and vegetables were spottled, wilting, and nasty to me. So my trade-off was that non-organic food of reasonable quality was preferable to poor-quality organic food...
I am with you on this one. I buy the best produce I can buy - Only if there is no difference in quality or an unreasonable price difference, I will support the local organic grower.
devilot said:So true. Such a common misconception that organic must automatically mean better. It's just like non-organic foods-- some good ones, some bad ones.
exactly
I have been very surprised recently about the poor quality of Whole Foods. Also, much of their produce that I looked at was NOT organic. The same ol' stuff the supermarkets carry but at the whole foods premium.
They do carry some hard to find things though like un homogonized milk and some nuts that have not been roasted, but other than that, I have not been impressed.
TRADER JOE'S on the other hand are OUTSTANDING! I love them and their food is inexpensive, some is natural, some is organic, but it doesn't matter either way because they have great stuff!
EDIT: sorry for the double post, if a mod could merge the posts, I would be greatful. There is no report post button for your own posts, I never noticed that before!
The nice thing about living in vancouver is that virtually all of the mega chain stores carry organics products right along their regular stuff. I can go to my local Safeway or Iga buy full groceries and not once touch the non-organic stuff. Then there are the smaller organic food store chains Capers, Choices etc. plus the really tiny mom/pop ones, oh and we have 5 farmers markets right in the city plus a 30 min drive lets you go pick the stuff of the farms themselves.
I for example eat 50/50 organic fruits and veggies but all my eggs are free range unmedicated ( they do taste better) and most of my meat is free range unmedicated. The cost is not that much higher for example chicken breast 3.29/lb regular or 3.49/lb organic...
I for example eat 50/50 organic fruits and veggies but all my eggs are free range unmedicated ( they do taste better) and most of my meat is free range unmedicated. The cost is not that much higher for example chicken breast 3.29/lb regular or 3.49/lb organic...
njmac said:
Actually, my family purchases a lot of things from local farmers' markets. We eat the vegetables my grandfather grows. Heck, my girlfriend lives on a farm I and love their stuff. I have no problems with these things. But making everything natural and preservative free is just going too far. Shipping preservative free food halfway across the country is going to far. It's one thing to have fresh local vegetables, milk, meat, etc. I just hate this whole idea that everything has to be fresh and preservative free. There are benefits to both. Moderation is the key to everything.
grapes911 said:
That's good to hear and I do agree about moderation or going without. Tomatoes in NJ in December, no thanks. They are picked before they are ripe and exposed to a gas that makes them red but they can't reasonably be shipped from CA to NJ ripe and be anything but mush.
Strawberries on the other hand can be amazing in december even though they're shipped a long way.
Bottom line though is that I agree with you!