The Unnatural Natural Food Store

My oldest daughter Harriet (not her real name) needs behind the wheel hours.  What a perfect excuse to check out the local natural food stores! I had Harriet give me the Miss Daisy treatment and we checked out three local natural food stores.  I eagerly explored (while she followed me in boredom) Valley Natural Foods, Fresh Thyme, and Mazopiya. I hated each one. If you are shopping for plastic packaged hypocrisy or patchouli oil, then these places might just be what you are looking for!  These stores quickly brought to my attention the alarming disconnect between healthy, organic food and sustainable, responsible packaging. I want to bring attention to this issue to hopefully bridge the gap. If I want to spend my hard earned money on natural, organic, sustainable, or free trade food and products, I don’t want it overpackaged in plastic.  Plastic packaging was everywhere, in/on/around practically every item. Each store offers a variety of food and spices in bulk but you have to put your bulk items in a large plastic bag. What’s the point in bulk if you need to put it in plastic? Yes, you can bring your own reusable bags or container but that can be awkward for many people. You have to get the tare weight of the container before you shop and that’s hard to do when you are new at this.  Why can’t they offer paper bags for the bulk section in two or three sizes? You could recycle or compost the paper bag. I laughed out loud at Fresh Thyme after Harriet and I navigated the sea of plastic and discovered the bamboo toothbrushes (packaged in plastic) on the other end of the store. It was a slow clap sort of moment. Buying a bamboo toothbrush packaged in plastic doesn’t cancel out the rest of the trash you will be producing by shopping. Harriet didn’t understand why it was so funny to me.  It was ridiculous to me that the stores were so far from what I had envisioned. It was hypocrisy at its best. “But the plastic has already been made,” she told me. Yes, the plastic in the store had already been made and by buying it we are perpetuating the perceived need for more. We need to let stores know we don’t want things packaged in plastic by refusing to purchase these items. Every time we buy things packaged this way we are saying that’s what we want. Now let’s all grab our torches and pitchforks and buy some patchouli oil packaged in glass!