Two days ago, I ventured into the Minnetonka Cub Foods to (a) become more informed about what kinds of local and/or organic food were being sold there, and (b) to use that information to help Cub shoppers make better food choices.
My post yesterday was a synopsis of my walk through the store, my initial observations, and my discoveries.
Today, I’ll make specific shopping recommendations: What are the best foods you can put in your Cub Foods shopping cart? Let me explain how I’ll do this.
First, the food I recommend will be the food I would buy for myself and my family.
Second, I will base my recommendations on the same set of guidelines that I follow when I shop, which are…
- Is it local?
- Is it organic?
- Is it fresh?
- Is it free of artificial ingredients?
- Is it sustainable?
- Has the environment been respected?
- Have animals been treated humanely?
- Have workers been treated fairly?
- Is it priced reasonably?
Finally, these guidelines aren’t arranged in any particular order; they’re all important. A food doesn’t have to meet all of them to get recommended – few do – but it does have to have the right combination of them.
Here’s an example: Cub Foods has local, but not organic, tomatoes for sale this week. They’re Bushel Boy, grown in a hothouse in Owatonna, Minnesota, 365 days a year. So hooray for a Minnesota grower that creates local jobs and fresh, ripe tomatoes that don’t have to be shipped from California or Mexico. And yet, I can’t overlook how much petro-fuel is being burned keeping those greenhouses warm enough and light enough to ripen tomatoes in our coldest, darkest months. Do we really need to eat fresh tomatoes in December?
So, based on their large, ecological footprint combined with their non-organic farming practices, I could not, in good conscience, recommend Bushel Boy tomatoes.
As Lee said in his great series about Thousand Hills Cattle beef, “As the word ‘local’ gets twisted into whatever marketers want it to mean, It’s incumbent upon us to do a little bit of research, to ask questions, and to trust our instincts.”
With that most appropriate lead-in, here are my recommendations for what to buy at Cub Foods this week.
Produce:
The four local offerings are Organic Valley acorn squash, Regent apples, Bushel Boy tomatoes, and fresh cranberries from Wisconsin. We’ve alredy eliminated the tomatoes, but the squash is a keeper because it’s local and organic. Buy it. The apples and the cranberries are local, but not organic, so as long as you’re comfortable with that, buy them, too. (Just remember to wash them thoroughly, in soap and water, before eating or using them in a recipe.)
Meat:
I recommend MBA’s Smart Chicken. It’s not local, but it is raised without antibiotics on “free-range farms” and fed a 100% vegetarian diet. It also earned a humane certification from Humane Farm Animal Care. Plus, there's no water added to plump up the meat, and at $6.49 a pound for boneless, skinless breasts, it's fairly priced. It may not be a perfect choice (I know the term "free-range" isn't always as good as it sounds), but it's a reasonably smart one.
Milk:
When buying milk at Cub Foods, let’s first consider price. At $2.99 a gallon, the Cub Foods brand is the least expensive, but it meets no other buying criteria. At $3.99 a gallon, Kemps milk is local and rBST-free, but not organic. The next jump up in price is a big one; at $5.79 a gallon, Old Home offers milk that is both local and organic. Finally, at the top of the range is Stonyfield Farm organic (but not local) milk, priced at $4.69 for a half gallon; do the math – that’s $9.38 a gallon!
Let’s make this choice a bit easier by eliminating the milk sold at the lowest price, Cub Foods, and the highest price, Stonyfield Farm, which leaves two to choose from: local, rBST-free Kemps, or local, organic Old Home. Maybe to you, the organic certification is worth two dollars more per gallon; or maybe hormone-free is good enough. Either way, I don’t think you can go wrong. Which one you choose may just depend on your budget and how much milk your family drinks.
Bread:
No bread in the entire store is made with organic flour, but Cub Foods does have its own in-store bakery. And that’s about as local as you can get. I also liked the woman who worked there, patiently answering my questions as she stacked fresh loaves of bread on the shelves. It seemed like she was good at her job, so I would like to help her keep it. That’s why I recommend buying the fresh-baked, local Cub Food bread over the national brands.
Miscellaneous
Here are my three most enthusiastic recommendations in the entire store, though I have to warn you, they are not the most economical. But consider them a luxury worth enjoying on special occasions -- like breakfast, for instance.
1. Cub Food’s own Wild Harvest breakfast-blend coffee. No, it's not local. But it’s ground from 100 percent organic Arabica beans, it's fair-trade certified, and it's priced at $6.49 for a 12-ounce package.
2. Wild Harvest Chai green tea. Again, not local, but also fair-trade certified and $3.19 for a box of 18 individually wrapped bags.
3. Pure maple syrup from Hamel, Minnesota. Definitely local! A 16-ounce bottle will cost you $8.79 but it's worth it; nothing beats the flavor of real maple syrup. (If you disagree, consider that The Angry Trout in Grand Marais includes a shot of local maple syrup on its dessert menu.)
Those are my recommendations based on my visit to Cub Foods two days ago. I know it’s not complete, and you will certainly need more to round out your shopping list. But it’s a start. And it’s significant. Imagine how much the food industry would change for the better if all of us bought just one local or organic item each time we went shopping.
One more thing: if you need help deciding what to do with some of these fresh, local, organic foods, check back on Sunday, when I’ll publish a simple, good and tasty recipe that utilizes three of the ingredients on this list.
Comments
Shari - great job on explaining the reasoning behind your recommendations. We all have different ideas of what is most important (local, organic, etc) and we have to make peace with that.
As a coffee addict, that's one thing I'll never give up. Maybe the Cub you went to didn't carry it, but the one in Eagan is pretty good about carrying Camerron's (not local) Organic French Roast. The 2 lb bag of beans generally runs about $15 and is typically what I buy.
Great stuff! I always encourage people to pick one thing and make the change. I think this guide gives the average grocery store shopper actionable buying options... to begin the shift to a more aware way of buying.
Another local item you can find at some of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area Cub's is injera, made by the local company Shega Injera on Franklin Ave. in Minneapolis.
I have to take issue with two things:
1 - greenhouses do not inherently have huge footprints. Do research into how the greenhouse is run. Because water can be reused and they heat themselves, often food grown in greenhouses can have a smaller footprint than that grown in an open field. Fresh local tomatoes in winter? Yes please.
2 - just because something is not labeled "organic" does not mean it was doused in pesticides. Just as the word "local" is getting overused, "organic" is a very dicey label. Many small/local farmers don't use chemicals. They also don't pay the huge sums of money to be certified.
Thanks for addressing the big box store question. The co-ops cannot possibly feed the entire population of the Twin City area! Getting more organic and local foods into the existing grocery store network is important both for consumers and for local producers. A difficulty on the local food side is that small farms may not produce enough for an entire grocery chain. Chain grocers want to offer largely the same product line in most of their stores.
I disagree with the comment about organic being a "very dicey label." The Certified Organic label means that all aspects of production have been inspected for compliance with the organic standards.
As for costs, there are subsidies to help pay for organic certification, and different certifying agencies have different fee scales. Saying that not all sustainable producers choose organic certification is accurate, though in most cases producers probably would benefit by doing so.
I appreciate that SGT is willing to address these questions.
Elizabeth at Wedge Co-op
Kris -- Thank you for the kind comments and the tip about the coffee.
Jason -- Thanks for the kind words and for understanding that even small changes can make big differences.
Liz -- Thanks for raising two important points: Could you post some information about ecologically friendly greenhouses? And do you know if Bushel Boy's facilities conform to those specifications? Also, I would never make the assertion that anything not organic is "doused in pesticides." However, apples regularly appear near the top of every list of fruits and vegetables that receive the most pesticide exposure. (Take a look at this: http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=AP)
Elizabeth -- Thanks for your very well-informed perspectives on big box stores, local food producers, and organic certification. Your input is always especially welcome!
Oh, I almost forgot...
Katie -- What the heck is "injera?" This is something I have never heard of! You must fill me in here! ;-)
Injera or boudeena, is an Ethiopian flat-bread. It's very spongelike, has a sourdough taste to it, and is cooked similar to a huge pancake. You eat it with Ethiopian dishes like stews made from beef, lentils, cabbage, or lamb, etc. It is very delicious! If you are looking for a restaurant to try some Ethiopian dishes, Fasika in St. Paul on Snelling is fabulous!
A few more items which most Cubs should carry:
- for coffee, most carry Starbucks and Caribou, and they have organic varieties. The biggest drawback to buying here is that they typically offer *ground* coffee, not whole-bean.
- the frozen-food section likely has at least Amy's, if not other local and/or organic brands
- you didn't mention cheeses, of which Cub carries many from Wisconsin. Again, the organic selection may be a bit -- umm -- lean, but at least there's local food there.
- it's not food, but some Cubs carry Green Forest paper goods and Seventh Generation products.
Thanks for the peek inside the store. Want to try Rainbow next? :-)
Shari-
Yes, there is Cub bread that can be considered (by some stretch of the imagination) as local, because it's baked in the store. But, another aspect of local is that local food shouldn't need preservatives (because it isn't shipped across the country or world). Looking at the label on most Cub breads, I see a plethora of things preservatives and various other things that shouldn't be in bread. If I'm not mistaken (I've been in Europe for a few months now), a lot of Cub breads have partially-hydrogenated oils, and that doesn't need to be embraced by anybody.
Thanks for weighing in, Alex, you're absolutely right - as usual.
Thanks also to the many folks you've helped us realize how different the selection can be at different stores. I end up at Rainbow and Target more often - mostly for convenience - and generally opt for the Organic Valley milk and dairy products. I'm very interested to know which stores carry which things, and I appreciate the tips and the education.
Good piece, Shari, and I'll back you up on Bushel Boy. It's an industrial operation, and while I haven't seen it myself, I've spoken with visitors who look pretty shell-shocked when they describe it. Imagine the movie Our Daily Bread. Or Brazil.
But I wish you'd applied your Bushel Boy logic to Kemp's milk (calling Kemp's Dairy Products "local" made me spit Cedar Summit out my nose).
Kemp's is owned by HP Hood, you see, one of the biggest dairy corporations in this part of the galaxy, and cha-chings $650 million per year in annual revenue.
http://www.dairyfoods.com/Archives/6a0047062e0a7010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0____
Begs the question, "The hell does local mean, anyway?" Very little till you look at ownership.
Also, the "rBST-free" claim is attractive, but muy dicey, to use the word-of-the-thread. No third-party inspectors coming to verify the claim. No national standards. No yearly review of the claim. No fines in place for misuse of the label. I would trust "rBST-free" on a small, single-herd dairy's bottle, perhaps, but on milk from a giant like Kemp's? Not so much.
El Dragon: Be careful with that local, organic Cedar Summit milk! That stuff is expensive! (But worth it!) :-)
This is all very tricky, isn't it? So much of the emphasis on local/organic/free-range, etc. these days is based more on hype than authenticity. And the truth is so often hidden under layers and layers of obfuscation, designed to, well, hide the truth.
Thanks for setting me straight on Kemp's milk. Keep reading and keep keeping us honest.
Cedar Summit ain't expensive. Kemp's is cheap. ;)
Yeah, I agree, outside the co-ops and farmers markets, unverified food claims like free range, rBGH-free, etc, are pretty puffed up and quite meaningless. That's why I'm excited when people actually blog about this stuff and we can talk about it, share info, tear the claims apart, and carry that learning with us when we shop. So thanks for doing it!
Thank you for doing this. After watching the documentary, "Food Inc.," my husband and I are trying to change what kind of meat we buy and other products. I have been a long-time Cub shopper, but am wondering is I should just stick to the local co-op. I am in southern Minnesota.
Thanks for the info )) I'll try to find some local stores that can replace the Cub Foods. Good luck!
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