Farmers' Market

Bryan and I have been frequenting the local farmers' market for the past month or so.

The progression to where we are now in our grocery buying adventure has been a gradual one. We began with the standard trip to Safeway, a large, west coast grocery chain. Then, somehow, we learned of the evils of high fructose corn syrup, and began looking for it in the ingredients of all of our food. It seems, nearly every food carried by regular grocery chains contains this sinister ingredient. From yogurt to bread, check it out.

Enter large chain organic grocery store, WholeFoods. Having previously avoided this behemoth due to its often exorbitant pricing, we did some cost comparisons. Most of the Safeways have an organic section, which sells many of the same foods found at WholeFoods. However, when we crunched the numbers, we realized that Safeway was gouging people who wanted to to eat healthy foods with whole grains and no poison in them. This seemed wrong... and expensive. So, we changed our regular grocery store to WholeFoods. During this time, Bryan was reading "An Omnivore's Dilemma", as well. So we began looking for organic animal products, including organic milk, free range chicken and eggs, and grass-fed beef.

We definitely pay more for the humane and organic versions of these products, but we feel good because we're not only helping the individual animals, but also the environment, by reducing the antibiotics and other unnatural things that are often added to these foods.

We were pretty happy with our weekly trips to WholeFoods and occasional trips to the city's co-op market to buy our organic goods. However, while the staples at WholeFoods are more reasonably priced than their counterparts at Safeway, we found that buying organic produce was putting us in the poor house. Grapes from Chile, peaches from Alabama, apples from New Zealand... That much travel costs a lot for a small piece of fruit, both in dollars and in pollution. Hmm.




We began to consider the farmers' market as a possible alternative. Hallelujah! We found that we could buy a pound of peaches for $1.50 per pound. Contrast that with the $2.99 per pound we paid at WholeFoods. And the produce at the farmers' market is local. None of it travels from other countries, or even other states. As an added bonus, much of it is labeled organic, even by rigid California standards.

So, Bryan and I are enjoying the lower cost and, quite frankly, better taste of local foods produced by small farms. And, in a world of growing pollution and environmental problems, our consciences are pretty clear, with an occasional splurge on bananas from afar.