Is Whole Foods (chain of stores) "cleaner" than other stores on average?

[AlexKChen]

Like can you trust food from it a bit more? [ideally lower in microplastics, pesticides, and grown in countries that have better standards]

[Beth]

I’ll be curious to see what other’s say.

From my personal experience, I feel their standards have gone down considerably since AMZN bought them, although I can’t prove anything. I don’t know if their sourcing is worse?

I imagine it’s a LITTLE BIT safer there just because they follow SOME standards. I don’t know if these standards are relevant to the specific topics you are more interested in.

For me, it’s their meat I trust more than most major retailers only because they do label it so you can choose for yourself what you value.

[AlexKChen]

x.com

Nutrient Levels in Retail Grocery Stores, or Why You Should Be Buying Your Groceries from Walmart

I’ve done some digging into nutrient levels in retail grocery stores (specifically where I should shop if I want nutritious food) and learned some insane things. Longest post I’ve done yet, so for readability this is also linked in my bio.

1. It’s a well-documented phenomenon that nutrient levels in produce have been declining for decades. The average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80-90% between 1914 and 2018. (Image by Workinger et al., 2018)

There are several reasons for this, but most of them are due to modern agricultural practices. These reasons include: selective breeding, soil depletion, synthetic fertilizers that provide basic nutrients necessary for plant growth but not others that would make them nutrient-dense, higher CO2 levels in atmosphere diluting nutrient content in plants, over-irrigation washing away nutrients from soil, and long storage times.

2. If all you care about is nutrient content, SPEED is the only factor that matters. That means time between being picked and ending up in your mouth. Price doesn’t matter, organic doesn’t matter, marketing hoo-ha about how fancy the produce is doesn’t matter. Literally just speed. Fresh spinach loses almost ALL of its vitamin C within 7 days of harvest when stored at 68°F (20°C). When stored at 39°F (4°C) which is about fridge temp, it loses 75%. The apples you buy at the grocery store can be up to a year old since they’ve been harvested, especially if you are not buying them in season.

Taste, texture, and smell are not good indicators of nutrient content, because you can’t tell how long it has been since it’s been harvested. Modern shipping and storage methods can be deceptive, combined with practices like spraying strawberry fragrance on otherwise bland strawberries so you think you’re buying the good stuff (yes some places actually do this).

In general, it can help to eat in season, but due to the globalized supply chain…it’s always in season somewhere. But how long did it take to get to you? You don’t know. Even if it’s in season where you are, how do you know if that’s not from last season? Again, you have no idea.

3. Think for a moment: what store do you think sells the most nutritious produce? Your local farmers’ market? Whole Foods? Trader Joe’s must be decent, right? Nope, it’s Walmart. Because of their scale and insanely efficient supply chain, they can get things from the farm (wherever it is in the world it’s growing in season) to the store where you can buy it, really really fast. Oh, and for the lowest cost.

I wanted to believe every time I splurged on fancier produce, I was actually getting something better. But this is what the data comparing 18 major US retailers showed – Walmart consistently outperformed.

I learned this from talking to Brent Overcash, co-founder of a startup called TeakOrigin, which specialized in testing nutrient content in groceries from retail grocery stores. For years, every week, his team would walk into grocery stores, buy thousands of produce items the way normal consumers would, and bring them back to the lab to assess nutrient content. They’d go to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Wegmans, Sprouts, Waitrose, farmers’ markets, and many more retailers. The “winner” varied depending on the specific type of produce/brands/exactly what week it was, but Walmart tended to come out on top. The more important point is that price and taste and organic certifications had no impact on the actual nutrient density.

They raised ~$5M and did a decade of research with labs full of analytical chemists where they used a combination of molecular spectrometry, HPLC, GC/MS, TGA, and wet chemistry methods. With 800+ million data points, the USDA and FDA at one point told them they had the world’s largest dataset of dynamic nutrition data. They’re no longer around, but had branches in California, Boston, and the UK just a couple years ago.

It went out of business because no major grocery store wanted to partner with them, because the transparency would hold these retailers accountable for so many things the consumers aren’t even currently aware of. Things like how Whole Foods centers their entire branding around fresher, higher quality produce that’s better for you, but when he actually tested some expensive apples they were selling from a local orchard advertised with handwritten chalkboard signs, it had so little nutrient content it was barely detectable on their lab-grade machines. He called the orchard because he was curious, under the guise that he was interested in picking some apples for the season. They said, “Oh sure, you can do that, but our first harvest isn’t for another 6 weeks.” That means it had been a year since the apples he bought were actually picked. This is actually industry standard, made possible by storing them at low temperatures and spraying a gas called 1-MCP which blocks ethylene (a gas naturally produced by the apples that makes them ripen) by binding to the same receptors.

I asked him: Are farmers’ markets any better, since we’re getting the produce directly from local farmers? And he said basically there’s huge variance. If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there’s no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them. Once, he actually saw a vendor at Boston farmers’ market selling carrots from Target! He could tell from the packaging because he used to work for them. Turns out when a produce delivery is refused by the grocery store, the truck owner is then responsible for getting rid of that produce, and they usually drive to a “food hub” where bulk produce is bought and sold just to recoup some of the costs. That is one possible source of the mysterious farmers’ market carrots they were pawning off as homegrown.

Now, I’m not saying you should stop shopping at non-Walmart places. There are a lot of factors other than nutrient density that influence a purchasing decision. The fancy, expensive produce might taste better, smell better, and be better for cooking. It may come from farms where there are better wages and working conditions. There might be fewer pesticides. But again, for nutrient content, speed is the only thing that matters.

I want to do something about this, but it’s an issue way bigger than I can tackle alone. From the way we do modern farming, to the complete lack of transparency on the retailer’s end (and vested interests in keeping it that way), to the government’s lack of interest in enforcing this transparency for the sake of consumers…the problem runs deep and I’m tired man. And so is Brent, who’s retired and doing woodworking in his studio these days, living the good life.

[CronosTempi]

FWIW, I would never buy food from Whole Foods. I’m talking about before they were taken over by Amazon - don’t have any experiences since, because I don’t set foot in there. The only thing I used to buy were the occasional wine and items like wheat bran from their bulk dispensers, but they stopped the dispensers, and I stopped coming. Basically they have no compunction about putting out old and unsafe food for you to buy. A friend bought some fancy duck pate, and got food poisoning, because it was old. Some personal communication from a casual aquaintance who used to work there confirmed for me the lack of ethics over there. There was an expose some years ago, about how WF would put old bottles of expensive olive oil up front, and how you should only buy the fast moving EVOO, because that way you know it’s fresh, and the very expensive stuff is rarely bought so it sits there forever. Old cheese, again the cheaper faster moving stuff is better, because the expensive fancy one sits there until some sucker buys the “fancy” one, and WF doesn’t have the decency to remove the old product. I don’t know how they’ve been since the Amazon takeover, but I never liked the vibe there, staff or policy. If it’s largely the same crew and ethics, I’d stay far away. Just my opinion YMMV.

I regularly shop at TJ’s, and trust them more than some other stores, even fancy ones like Bristol Farms. Gelson’s is OK, though overpriced.

[blsm]

I’ve heard the same about Walmart because of their sheer buying power. I’ve also felt Whole Foods went a bit downhill since Amazon purchased them @Beth. I still go there for a few things I simply can’t find anywhere else though.
One exciting thing that’s developed in the last 1.5 months since I took early retirement is that we’ve decided to homestead so I’ll be growing a significant portion of our produce starting in the coming year. We’ve picked out a greenhouse to install on the side of the barn and I’ve started composting.

[Beth]

@blsm I love that you will be growing a lot of your own food!!! A friend in my neighborhood has a ginormous garden, and in the California weather, she can eat mostly from what is in her yard. I’m very jealous, but I also have no desire to garden! I grew herbs on my countertop a couple years ago, but when I had an aphid incident, I was done!!! Hundreds all over the counter

So, just know I’ll be jealous of you, too! I look forward to hearing about your journey.

And @CronosTempi I don’t think you are wrong. From my experience, most grocery stores do this. I’ve bought countless things that were out of date from many places. My experience with chicken taught me a lot.

For over a decade, I made my own raw chicken cat food. The butcher would tell me ‘we got fresh chicken in today’ and I’d go buy 25 pounds. I would then serve it to the cats, and not one of them would touch it (they would always happily refund me). This happened enough times that I finally figured out they were being given older meat by the distributor. The butcher investigated and, for example, last week the distributor gave them chicken processed on 9/1, the next week the distributor gave them chicken processed on 8/20, etc… So, we learned, just because it was a fresh delivery, it meant nothing. The manager was also shocked. Once I knew to have them look up the kill date, I never had that problem again.

This was not a problem for human consumption because we obviously cook it. But when raw, unless it was very fresh, it wouldn’t pass the cat sniff test.

On that note, it’s not just WF. I had worse luck at Safeway. I felt better about WF anyway because their chickens are killed a little more humanely.

And @AlexKChen I was reminded to come back here when I read about a cheese recall today. I always find it interesting when these things happen because it lifts the curtain on how many of the products at many stores and under many brand names is all from the same place. I learned this from my first job when I was selling something to a big food production company. The guy gave me a helpful hint about the mayonnaise they were making. He said this is x brand mayo (it was hellmans or Kraft, can’t remember), but it’s also the same as such and such store brand. Mind was blown

[Natalie_K]

Whole Foods is now just like Safeway. I do care abt buying organic because the USA doesn’t have proper controls for some really bad pesticides, and I don’t want them used on our planet. I go to a local grocer that sources produce from local farms and labels the source, the produce lasts way longer from there and you can see that it’s fresher. If I didn’t care abt organic I would shop at Walmart or similar.
We also grow a seasonal garden so eat mostly from that a few months out of the year, but we’re in the PNW so winter and early spring gardens are very limited.

[Dexter_Scott]

@Beth Why feed cats raw meat rather than cooked?

[Beth]

Sorry, I was out of town for a few days…

Great question!!! I’ll overshare because I find my experience with raw fascinating!

There are many people who feel cats do better on raw because they have short acidic digestive tracks (if we ate raw, it would sit around inside of us longer and potentially cause problems) and they have not been domesticated long enough to breed out their ability to handle it. Many believe it’s significantly healthier for them. I can’t speak to that part, but my five cats LOVED it and thrived on it. High protein and tons of muscle on them.

The only reason I started them on it was because my kitten was so so sick from constant diarrhea that was making him weak, and the vets were giving him constant rounds of steroids that didn’t work one day post treatment.

Finally, a specialist suspected he had IBD. He said cats with IBD do better with grain free diets and wet food instead of kibble (all cats do better on wet, as it turns out). This was long before the grain free trend took over pet food… it was just starting and the big pet food companies were mocking it, you know, right before they started making it, too

Well, the grain free canned was a tad better for him, but he was still getting weaker and weaker… a kitten laying around and not playing! I googled and read that raw can help. 17 years ago when commercial raw for cats was barely a thing, I thought that was a load of craziness, but I was desperate so I ran out to the store within minutes of reading it and picked up raw liver. I am vegan and almost gagged

I kid you not, he was fine the very next day. I’m talking 100% fine!!!

I then got proper raw balanced food and never looked back.

After a couple of years, his system was able to handle a little bit of grain free canned. More and more as time went on. But, at that point, the cats loved raw so much, I just kept them on it, but I incorporated canned just so they had something else they liked incase a time that came when they couldn’t have it

Fast forward, last year he got CKD and had to go on a modified diet, so he was getting more canned and much less raw at that point. He did fine on it and now the cats who are left are preferring canned, so that is what they are getting. I’ll use some raw treats so they still get the benefit, if there is one.

That one day seeing how to raw liver basically saved his life taught me food really is medicine, and that is when I began my own journey with health. It was a life changing thing for me to witness.

Longer answer than you were hoping for!!!

[Dexter_Scott]

I appreciate the long response! One of my cats just had a bladder blockage, and I had to change his diet. He is currently on the (insanely expensive) Royal Canin prescription urinary diet. That canned food does have wheat gluten and wheat flour in it (who knows why) but one of the main ingredients is chicken liver - raising the obvious question, why not feed him straight up chicken liver? But until you mentioned it, I didn’t even know feeding cats raw meat was a thing.

[Beth]

I can’t speak to bladder issues, but I have learned that, while effective and throughly tested, most of the foods sold at the vet’s office are filled with cheap biologically inappropriate fillers, as you saw! I believe, just like with CKD, there are higher quality alternatives out there if you know what you are looking for… for example, with CKD, finding low phosphorus and moderate protein foods is key, but they don’t have to be from the vet. You just need to know that is what is needed. In fact, most cats hate that stuff.

My first two cats were only on science diet kibble from the vet’s office. I thought I was the best cat mom by sparing no expense. When I learned about cat nutrition years later, I looked at those ingredients and cringed. The vets are just like people docs and most have good intentions but are simply clueless on nutrition. One of them got recurring uti’s… I then learned he most likely wouldn’t have if on canned food for the moisture, GAH!

So, aside from treats or a short term experiment, you can’t feed 100% raw. (Up to 10% per day can be unbalanced, so they say). They need supplements in there to balance out the meal. You can easily make your food with a mix (you just add your own meat and/or liver, depending on the mix), or you can buy frozen premade cat raw food. If you cat is older, I suggest eggshell and not bones for calcium because that is easier on old CKD vulnerable kidneys. Maybe it doesn’t matter if they are younger.

You can also get freeze dried raw complete cat food (meaning, with supplements so it’s not 100% meat), and you just rehydrate with water. I will give them as treats without water. Just know that freeze dried is even drier than kibble, so you need to limit how much is fed without water because it can make your cat prone to uti’s and also just general dehydration.

I’m happy to share a TON more and some resources if you are interested. The owners of some of the smaller companies I’d buy my stuff from are super duper knowledgeable and helpful. More knowledgeable than most vets on nutrition. They can probably advise on appropriate food for bladder problems as well.

The brands my cats have liked the most and are run by people who have advised me and I trust:

RAWR from eat like a lion (premade frozen and I trust her completely) (she is in the Bay Area and I used to drive two hours to get her food before she went national)

EZ Complete (powder to mix with your own raw or even COOKED meat)
I believe this was born from a facegroup group that advises on raw (I can direct you to the correct group if desired)

Alnutrin (powder to mix with your own raw meat and raw liver)
My first foray into making raw and she spent countless hours on doing calculations and creating recipes for me.

Fresh is best (freeze dried cat food… hint, under their treat tab, you can choose their “tasty chicken trimmings recipe’ which is the same as their cat food but is the little shreds that were left over after making the cat food nuggets and is half the price!)

If buying your own meat, and the cats don’t like it, I have tips and tricks if you want to message me… but remember, it could be a simple as the meat wasn’t fresh enough.

Depending on where you live, there are probably several pet stores who sell plenty of raw options. Just not at the huge chains.

Happy to share anything I’ve learned… If I didn’t spend all those years learning to help my cats, I could have cured cancer

[CronosTempi]

Apart from the good info about nutrition, I’d love it if you shared your secret to getting cats to do what you need them to with food. Our two cats would rather starve than eat healthy food. Raw gets rejected with barely a sniff. Years ago I read about raw for cats and it made sense to me, so we ran out to buy fresh liver, beef and chicken. Rejected - tried cutting this way and that way, slightly warming, adding water, all to no avail. Tried a variety of ways, different meats, over a period of time, tried different stores, expensive butchers cut right there fresh, all no good. Raw fish, sushi, shrimp, crab, oyster all rejected. After weeks of this we gave up. Some cats are just picky. Both of our cats won’t even properly eat wet food. What they’ll do is to sometimes lick a bit of the liquid sauce, but leave the more solid chunks, strips, bits alone; pate gets rejected outright. We’ve never given up on wet food - it’s always a hunt for a new can from another company, and the same pattern - open can, put in bowl, cat comes over, sniffs, walks away, about quarter of the time licks a bit. If the cat licks for more than a few seconds we get super excited, don’t dare move not to distract. This has been going on for years. We never gave up on wet food, experimenting with warming up, adding more water etc., but it hasn’t worked so far. The stuff sits there for a day or so, and then goes in the back, where next to a bush we put it out for the possums and raccoons - we’ve got the best fed ones in the state, I believe, lol.

Our cats like dry food, period. And picky there too. Mostly they are like spoiled kids, always preferring the worst trash. We avoid to the greatest degree possible any food with a China connection, try the healthiest, and often quite expensive, but they have a sixth sense of avoiding “healthy” brands. What they like is variety. A new brand, if accepted, will be popular for a week or two, then they look at you “so, anything else out there?”. It’s a perpetual hunt for new food. And always a lottery if they will like it. Freeze dried fish of all kinds, dried duck liver, quail eggs, and a thousand other things - only about a third gets accepted, and sometimes lasts a few weeks. Fortunately, you can cycle, after a few months they’ll like a brand again, briefly. And like teenagers, they’re crazy for treats. We try many tricks, like putting new healthy brand kibbles in a treat bag, so they think it’s a new treat, and sometimes can be fooled for a time, but again they got a sharp instinct about rejecting “healthy”… only trash please!

Knock on wood, they are quite healthy so far. Sadly our white cat has skin cancer, he’s 15 and otherwise healthy, and we’re thinking of putting him on rapa.

[Beth]

@CronosTempi

We try many tricks, like putting new healthy brand kibbles in a treat bag, so they think it’s a new treat

I’m dying!!! That is so perfect… and logical :). I get this!! My husband makes fun of me because after they like a new food, I buy cases of it… he says that is the kiss of death… keep it in the car and just bring in one can at a time

I feel your pain! I had 5 feral rescues that were so incredibly picky… apparently ferals are the worst! You’d think they’d be grateful, but nope! It’s all about smelling things in the wild to make sure it’s safe

Ha on the raccoons… I’d take rejected raw and feed it to the buzzards… they loved us!!!

Later today or tomorrow when I have time, I’ll write out all the tricks and tips that have worked for me…. Stay tuned!!!

[AlexKChen]

The Jeffersonians on the Margins of NatCon - Front Porch Republic

^Thomas Massie is very local and he has A LOT of merit to him, but most conservatives tend to be way too dismissive about microplastics (also the chickens he raises are pallid and obese and not exactly “wild”/local)

[Beth]

Hi Cronos! I’m sorry this is so late.

I’ll share what I did to get my cats to eat raw. Keep in mind, they were kittens, so they were probably easier than your junk food addicts. Having said that, I had 5 feral rescues, and, for my sanity, I was trying to get them all to eat the same thing, so that did make it more of a challenge.

My crew has never liked 99% of the commercial raw pet foods available, so I wound up making most of it. They didn’t like the veggie content. Even when I found the right commercial foods, it was obvious they much preferred homemade by a mile. When moving to this small town, I could barely get chicken fresh enough for their high standards, so I started getting my chicken directly from the farm. They loved it so much more than anything they had eaten before. I share this because even though the butcher cut it up that day and even though it might have been delivered that day, it doesn’t mean it’s as fresh as you think it is. Find out the kill date, not delivery date, and maybe try things that were once a fail in order to rule out the smell of something not quite as fresh. My crew liked things killed within 5 days… 3 was ideal…

You mentioned many cuts. My cats preferred it blended in the food processor to become closer to pate vs chunks. And, you mentioned many good ideas that failed, but perhaps you try some unsalted human tuna water and pour that over the healthy canned or raw? If yours don’t go for that, you are royally screwed

Fwiw, my cats liked chicken the most… then turkey, then no other proteins.

They say to incorporate a little bit of the healthy food you want them to eat into the food they love, and then slowly, over a long time period, keep changing the ratio to one day nixing the unhealthy stuff, or to at least having an inverse relationship and the unhealthy stuff is just sprinkled on the healthy stuff.

Also, don’t feed kibble at the same time as raw. They said it will slow the digestion of raw in their digestive tracks and then bacteria can become an issue. You could check to see if the science on this has changed. I learned that 17 years ago!

What I did with the kittens was use a cat food that was tuna based (not human tuna), and I coated the healthy wet/raw food with it. I treated it as I was icing a cake. First it was a thick layer all over… then a thin layer all over… and then eventually there was just a touch of tuna on top. This is a dangerous trick because it’s said fish is so strong smelling for a cat that they can easily become fish addicts. I just didn’t know a better way. Cats are all about smell, so it masked the smell of the ‘strange’ new food until it no longer smelled unfamiliar and then they would eat more and more of the raw that lies beneath.

When I eventually learned they shouldn’t have so much tuna, I discovered kitty crack!! Freeze dried chicken! I’ve gone through MANY brands and they clearly prefer some over the others. They wouldn’t even touch certain brands, so know you need to experiment. Their consistent stand out favorite is Cat Man Doo Life Essentials freeze dried chicken sprinkles (note SPRINKLES, they sell many sizes and if you put big chunks on their food, they can just eat the chunks off :). (When they are being less picky, I’ll alternate it with Fresh is Best chicken sprinkles because theirs is raw and a lot less expensive). You can get it Cat Man Doo on Chewy, but if you continue to buy it, I recommend buying in bulk on the company’s website for a much bigger discount. (I get 6 bags from them)

If I were doing it again, I’d start with this kitty crack idea and skip the tuna.

You can start out putting a ton on top, and then slowly reduce the amount. My cats have loved it so much that a sprinkling goes on each and every meal they get. If I happen to forget, they just stare at me with food in front of them until I top their food… it’s perfectly healthy, so no problem there. Even now, they still react to the smell. Without it, their food is just not familiar I suppose? Or just spoiled rotten… probably both!

Another way to use the smell/taste enticement method is to use bonito flakes and press them in the food…

And if they are kibble addicts, and because you shouldn’t mix kibble with raw, I would first try doing all the above as a snack

And then at meal time, you try these methods with canned food topped with some of their favorite kibble ?

I imagine you’ve tried versions of this before! It sounds like you’ve tried just about everything!

BTW, if you ever have sick kitties and need tips on medicines, please reach out. I had a very sick cat who needed many medicines all day long for the last year and I have the BEST source for compounded pet meds… and tricks to get them inside … it took me a LONG time and a lot of wasted money and endless tears to perfect my operation!

Oh, also, have you tried Churu tuna tubes? If not, that is also an excellent enticement that you can ‘ice the cake’ with.

I hope some of that is useful and don’t hesitate asking anything else. If there is anything in here that you haven’t tried, and if it works for you, please let me know!! If my blood sweat and tears helps anyone else, it makes me so happy!

[CronosTempi]

Thank you Beth, I’m saving all this amazing material for later scrutiny, as soon as I’m not slammed for time! Cats, one thing they know nothing of, is deadlines and why walking on keyboards and losing me hours of work does not translate to more time for cat playtime .

[Davin8r]

I’m going to go against the grain here, just to say my wife and I love our local Whole Foods. I haven’t seen any real change since it was bought by Amazon. Great selection of organic fruits, many many healthier packaged food items that can’t be found at our local Safeway, Kroger, etc, a delicious bakery (although just as unhealthy as less delicious bakeries😆). Even the pizza place inside ours has great, fresh brick oven pies. It’s always busy, and we are there probably 4 days each week to grab one thing or another.

I also love our Trader Joe’s, which is just down the street from our WF, but they are very different and I use them for different things.

[Beth]

@Dexter_Scott @CronosTempi

HI, I remembered talking to each of you about feeding my cats raw, so out of an abundance of caution, I wanted to update you on my practices.

Because one cat has died from raw feeding, and even the CA poultry Federation posted about the avian flu on their own site, I have ceased feeding raw for the time being.

[CronosTempi]

Yeah, saw that in the news. Even big cats are affected by avian flu, in zoos and various sanctuaries, they’re dying in droves.

[AlexKChen]

https://x.com/dylan522p/status/1873227889610735667

https://x.com/EricTopol/status/1878809741734170675