Eating Healthy In The Wake Of The Bush Economic Miracle

I'm a comparison shopper. It takes 3 stores for me to get my groceries-- Trader Joe's and Nature Mart in my neighborhood and Erewhon way on the other side of town. Trader Joe's sells 1.5 liter bottles of Fiji water for almost a dollar less per bottle than anyone else. I drink around 14 bottle a week, theoretically, a savings of nearly $700/year. That kind of thing adds up. Trader Joe's is always the cheapest place in town to get organic blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries and the only place with pomegranate seeds. Nature Mart is the closest place to my house but I go there the least frequently because their prices are high and their service is indifferent (high employee turnover) but it's where I can always go in a pinch if I need an avocado, some tomatoes or a raw food munchie.

My grocery store of choice in Erewhon because it caters to raw foodists. The prices are ok but not great. I used to shop at Whole Foods. That's how I figured out that Erewhon was ok. Aside from being way cheaper than Whole Foods, they have much better produce. Whole Foods is about 25% organic-- if that. Erewhon is over 90% organic. Corporately, Whole Foods knows what raw food is-- they have quite the nice raw foods set-up in the flag ship store in Austin-- but in L.A.... clueless. I shouldn't say that. They used to get an F and now they get a C, big improvement.

Today's NY Times takes a look at Whole Foods' p.r. campaign to change its image as an unaffordable rich people store to one for just plain (health-conscious) folks. Some value conscious wag nicknamed it Whole Paycheck-- which stuck-- and since the p.r. campaign is based mostly on smoke and mirrors, it doesn't work; at least not for me. I don't think the Times bought it either. This graphic is theirs:

Whole Foods Market is on a mission to revise its gold-plated image as consumers pull back on discretionary spending in a troubled economy. The company was once a Wall Street darling, but its sales growth was cooling even before the economy turned. Since peaking at the beginning of 2006, its stock has dropped more than 70 percent.

Now, in a sign of the times, the company is offering deeper discounts, adding lower-priced store brands and emphasizing value in its advertising... Whole Foods’ makeover comes amid a tumultuous time in the grocery industry, as customers struggling to pay for higher-priced fuel and food are trading down to lesser products and discount-oriented stores.

About 15% of Americans are hard core organic food consumers, but the growth has slowed down and, because of hard economic times, it's even slipping in some areas (like packaged foods). A day or two ago we looked at the petering out of the globalization craze, mostly from the perspective of the re-industrialization of America. But it also means that it will be far more expensive to ship foods from cheap, far away countries. But there's a bright side to that coin too:

Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities.

“This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.”