A new look at Whole Foods

I ran to Whole Foods this evening while my son was at soccer practice and found myself frozen like a deer in the headlights.  I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and - oh-oh -  there is a small seismic shift taking place.  

I thought I had a good plan:  I've been bringing all my own bags including nylon mesh bags for the produce - it takes so little effort.  (In fact, given how incredibly little effort it takes, I'm increasingly horrified that most people who are near and dear don't bother...but I remain mute.  Holier than thou isn't a helpful out-loud attitude.)   I buy organic and/or local whenever I can  because, to me, I am spending that money better than if I were to donate to a dozen environmental charities:  let's not pour fossil fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides all over the ground where we can help it, big organic is better than no organic, let's try to support local agriculture whenever possible and burn less fuel in shipping.  I try not to buy produce from too far away or from countries where I doubt their controls on chemicals applied to food.

In the last decade, grocery shopping has been a mental exercise in weighing this value against that value.  Should I buy local conventional tomatoes from a small farm or organic ones from California?  Should I buy the Whole Foods brand organic skim milk and save a few dollars or the Organic Valley (New England Family Farms) brand and support - in theory - small dairies?  Should I cave to my desire for amazingly juicy farmed Atlantic salmon or buy the supposedly less impactful Alaskan salmon?  No tuna steak for my kids please- too much mercury - sigh.  I haven't reached this level of deliberation about everything I buy, but I try.  I do the best I can and I enjoy trying to understand the issues.  Our grocery bill is bigger than some but smaller than others.  I try not to dance around in the gourmet cheese or prepared food sections too much.

So back to deer-in-the-headlights.  Everything...EVERYTHING in the produce section is from California.  All right - parsnips were local.  Well, duh, it is May.  There isn't much selection from New England at this time of year.  The lettuce and spinach in my garden isn't anywhere near harvestable yet.  Kingsolver's book describes in detail the first year that her family decided to completely subsist on local food.  No California anything. No bananas.  Even the flour is made locally.  O.K - so I have no plan to mimic her.  But here I am, completely paralyzed by the complete lack of anything that didn't have to be shipped thousands of miles. 

I did join a local CSA over the winter (to the uninitiated: you pay a sum -- a few hundred dollars -- up front for a "share" of produce from a local farm for a well-defined season.  You take on the risks of farming as well as the returns.)  My husband wasn't thrilled by the incredible bounty of root vegies but we did cook most of them and had fun.  My daughter and I opened each box as though it was Christmas.  What are we getting?  What is it called?  How do we cook it?  As a result of the CSA, we've determined that we adore parsnips and that kale is an incredibly versatile vegetable.  And we went to the farm, meet the woman who grew our vegies and stood on the ground where the stuff was grown.  

Could I live without lettuce?  Tahini?  Without bananas?  Without any fruit over the winter?  Coffee?  Chocolate?  Wow.  

Solutions?  Keep plugging away.  Our local farmer's market starts up soon.  And maybe I will join that Boston-area meat CSA later this year.  And maybe more CSAs.  And more.

By the way - Kingsolver wrote one of the most articulate defenses for being carnivorous that I've ever read.  She argues that eating local animals who have been humanely raised (a cow grazing on pasture grass for its entire life for example), is environmentally and ethically better than subsisting on tofu, grains, or vegetables that have been intensively cultivated (killing scores of birds and insects in the process) and shipped a long distance.  She definitely turned me around a bit.  I've been operating under the assumption that complete vegetarianism is probably better for our planet - though I've never followed through.  It was difficult to locate meat that was "grass finished" (the steer lived on pasture-grass) at Whole Foods.  I bought some hamburger that was "grass-fed" and will have to research the source a little.  Good for Kingsolver - but she's really complicated my life.