If you search for happiness, don't go looking farther than your own back yard.

We finally found time today to go to Whole Foods. I mentioned a few days ago that I had been in search of some organic peanut oil. Well I decided that if I was going to go to Whole Foods for one item, I would just get everything there.

I had visions of isles of prefect and organic produce, all varieties of blissful fruits and vegetables. I expected 10 different varieties of organic tortillas and organic cheese to write home to my parents about. And I kind of found it, but I kind of didn't at the same time.

I did find beautiful fruits and veggies. Everything seemed to have a coat of gloss paint on it. But I was surprised to see that half of the produce was conventional and the other half organic. I did like that the store labels items that are local. Probably there are local varieties at Fairway, but they don't label them, so who will ever know?

I am a store brand shopper. I always try to buy everything from the store brand at Fairway, because it is cheaper and I think very high quality. Many of my friends do the same thing, I know the Fairway brand sells faster and so those goods are fresher. The Fairway brand is always clearly labeled as to whether the items are organic or not. At Whole Foods, I always thought that the 365 brand was always organic. It is not. And there were times that I found it hard to find the organic labeling on the packaging. Maybe that was just because I was looking for the label of organic and it wasn't there.

The most amazing thing though??? Price. I discovered that Whole Foods was no more expensive or less expensive than Fairway. I was SHOCKED about that. Mostly because I have said that I felt that Fairway was such an affordable grocery store, and at the same time I have been convinced that Whole Foods was so expensive. And maybe Fairway's conventional items are less expensive. But when it comes to organics, the brands are identical and the price is nearly identical. Some things you pay 10 cents more for other you pay 10 cents less. It is a wash.

I am happy with everything that I bought at Whole Foods. There are a couple of items and brands that they carry that I cannot find anywhere else. so I will probably try to run over during a lunch break to buy a bottle of prized oil or a great cheese. but I don't need to go out of my way to get all my groceries at Whole Foods. Heck, Fairway has a parking lot. And to me that is huge!

But I think the thing that stood out the most to me was that all the brands of organic items were exactly identical. Whole Foods did not have an expanded selection that was apparent to me. That says to me what I have heard for a long time. That there really aren't as many organic options in this country. For the millions of people in this country only a small percentage can eat food that is not conventionally grown. Not because of price, but because there is not enough supply. But my generation is coming. Our demand of organic food is growing because we are all seeing the effects of the 'modern' way of life. So much progress has been made recently, but we have a long way to go before we can proclaim that every child in this country has access to foods that have been created at every level in a way that preserves the land for their future.

Waste Not, Want Not: Part I

If you are going to write a blog about eating healthier and staying on a budget you really have to tackle the subject of waste. Waste is something that most people in my generation are keenly aware of. Those of us who grew up in the 80s will always remember the anti-litter campaigns and the grainy images of the overflowing dumps and landfills on the nightly news as our trash problem slowly emerged as something that needed to be discussed.

A weekly trip to the grocery store with my family includes taking a list so that we can stay on a budget, but invariably we end up at least 15% over that budget because of all the items that end up in our cart that were never on the list. It is not the kids that clamor for these food items. They are really too young for that kind of begging, and our problem now is getting the kids to eat at all, rather than overeating. It is myself and DH that are swayed into buying things like Kashi bars and $7 per pound dried blueberries. Well, okay, it is mostly me.

At least once a month I have to throw away foods that have not been consumed. It is mostly leftover side dishes that didn't get eaten, the ends of a loaf of bread, or juice that now tastes acidic and turned. There are always wilted veggies and brown fruit that we throw away. I sometimes lovingly refer to my refrigerator as 'The Food Museum', because everything is neatly packed into tupperware and on display. Look but don't touch.

Andrew Martin of the New York Times wrote in 2008 that

"...Americans waste an astonishing amount of food-an estimated 27% of the food available for consumption, according to a government study...It works out to be about a pound of food every day for every American."

Martin reports that it breaks it down into the following categories for a family of four each month:

18.5 pounds of grains

10.5 pounds of processed fruits and veggies

24 pounds of fresh fruits and veggies

22 pounds of liquid milk

10.4 pounds of meat and fish

15 pounds of sweetener

8.6 pounds of oils

12.8 pounds of other foods (including eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, dry beans, peas and lentils and dairy other than liquid milk)

Now his numbers include uneaten restaurant food and food that grocery stores throw away because of spoilage (also think foods that are unspoiled but past their expiration date) but it does not include ready to eat foods that grocery stores throw away like rotisserie chickens and sandwiches and soup. So although you could step back from these numbers and say "I am not directly responsible for this", we are consumers within this industrialized food chain, so technically we are culpable.

Martin's numbers were right in the middle of what I found when I searched "Americans waste food" at Google.com. Some sites quoted more along the lines of 12% of the total food available while some more politically motivated sites quoted closer to 50%.

My current mission of shopping for unprocessed foods, I am hoping, will have 2 outcomes. One, That I will cook more often and eat higher quality things. And two, food will become less convenient so I will eat less of it. But I think there is a third thing factored into these two objectives, because I will be expending more time cooking I will be less apt to waste foods into which I have put all that effort. In a sense, food will become more valuable to me and my family. And for the Frugal Franny I am deep inside, I will save money in the process.

Isn't this what we all want?

Stay tuned this week, I bought ramps at the farmer's market and I am not sure what to do with them. And tomorrow I go in search of pressed peanut oil at the conventional grocery. I wonder if I will find it.

Works Cited

Andrew Martin. One County's Table Scraps, Another Country's Meal. New York Times Week in Review. nytimes.com. 18 May 2008.