This Week's Column – By Zack Anchors
The search for good groceries
You can tell a lot about somebody based on where they do their grocery shopping. Around here, we have Shaw’s die-hards, Hannaford loyalists, Wild Oats devotees, small natural food store benefactors, Super Wal-Mart patrons and, probably, those who live off what they find at the local Seven Eleven. And people often have strong feelings about which grocery store they support and why they do so. I would even bet that you could predict fairly accurately how someone voted in this week’s election based on which is their favorite grocery store – the choices we make about what we eat and what we buy usually tend to reflect our broader system of values.
Some grocery shoppers are looking only for the lowest price, even if it’s only pennies less. Others are looking for “natural” foods. Some demand strictly organic, as defined by the FDA or some other authority. Other people want locally produced groceries. Others want easy parking. Some shoppers just want find a pleasant atmosphere to shop in or a place where they’ll run into people they know. And some people like having a special card that gives them discounts, while others find it a nuisance.
It’s easy to think of ways in which all of these various interests are analogous to the political positions and issues of the day. Wal-Mart, For example, provides a very different economic and social model than does the Whole Grocer in Portland. It’s unfettered free-market fundamentalism versus conscious and sustainable consumerism.
There are also many shoppers like myself who hold no ties and go to one place for cheap groceries, another for some high quality produce, another for some obscure ingredient and another for the free samples. That’s the way I tend to vote too.
But despite my freewheeling grocery ways, I’ll admit that I’ve always been especially fond of Hannaford. It might just be the nostalgia that comes with it being my childhood grocery store (back when it was Shop n’ Save), but I’ve also always found that they usually tend to create a nice balance between the competing interests listed above. You could call them the centrist moderates of grocery store chains.
Last week, in a cover story, the New York Times gave me another reason to like the Scarborough-based Hannaford. The article was about a new system the chain has developed, called Guiding Stars, which rates the nutritional value of the products carried within its stores. The idea itself is nothing too bold or new – all sorts of companies rate foods for nutritional value all the time. What is impressive about Hannaford’s system is that it’s actually useful and honest. It’s so honest that 77 percent of Hannaford’s 27,000 products failed to earn even one star –meaning minimal nutritional value. And a whole host of products, like V8 vegetable juice and Campbell’s Healthy Request soups, which are marketed on the premise that they are healthy, were among the starless, according to the article.
Many companies make the claim that their products are healthy based on the fact that those products meet somewhat weak guidelines established by the Food and Drug Administration. But Hannaford’s health standards go much further than the FDA and many foods that the government says are nutritional Hannaford identifies otherwise.
Of course, spokespeople from the corporate food industry voiced irritation at Hannaford ratings, saying that the ratings were unfair and based on an unrealistic idea of what Americans are willing to eat. But the reality of what Americans are willing to eat is, in fact, the problem. It’s admirable that Hannaford has the integrity to point out to its customers that most of the products they are selling should only be consumed in very limited quantities.
It’s really not all that hard to figure out what is healthy and what is not – items that are embedded in layers of packaging tend to be unhealthy, while unprocessed vegetables and whole grains tend to good for you. But it does get a little frustrating when every major food corporation is spending loads of money trying to convince people to betray their own common sense. Although it’s a disturbing sign that a company looking out for the best interests of their customers and being honest with them merits front-page attention, it’s nice to hear that the company is one being run by people from around here.
You can tell a lot about somebody based on where they do their grocery shopping. Around here, we have Shaw’s die-hards, Hannaford loyalists, Wild Oats devotees, small natural food store benefactors, Super Wal-Mart patrons and, probably, those who live off what they find at the local Seven Eleven. And people often have strong feelings about which grocery store they support and why they do so. I would even bet that you could predict fairly accurately how someone voted in this week’s election based on which is their favorite grocery store – the choices we make about what we eat and what we buy usually tend to reflect our broader system of values.
Some grocery shoppers are looking only for the lowest price, even if it’s only pennies less. Others are looking for “natural” foods. Some demand strictly organic, as defined by the FDA or some other authority. Other people want locally produced groceries. Others want easy parking. Some shoppers just want find a pleasant atmosphere to shop in or a place where they’ll run into people they know. And some people like having a special card that gives them discounts, while others find it a nuisance.
It’s easy to think of ways in which all of these various interests are analogous to the political positions and issues of the day. Wal-Mart, For example, provides a very different economic and social model than does the Whole Grocer in Portland. It’s unfettered free-market fundamentalism versus conscious and sustainable consumerism.
There are also many shoppers like myself who hold no ties and go to one place for cheap groceries, another for some high quality produce, another for some obscure ingredient and another for the free samples. That’s the way I tend to vote too.
But despite my freewheeling grocery ways, I’ll admit that I’ve always been especially fond of Hannaford. It might just be the nostalgia that comes with it being my childhood grocery store (back when it was Shop n’ Save), but I’ve also always found that they usually tend to create a nice balance between the competing interests listed above. You could call them the centrist moderates of grocery store chains.
Last week, in a cover story, the New York Times gave me another reason to like the Scarborough-based Hannaford. The article was about a new system the chain has developed, called Guiding Stars, which rates the nutritional value of the products carried within its stores. The idea itself is nothing too bold or new – all sorts of companies rate foods for nutritional value all the time. What is impressive about Hannaford’s system is that it’s actually useful and honest. It’s so honest that 77 percent of Hannaford’s 27,000 products failed to earn even one star –meaning minimal nutritional value. And a whole host of products, like V8 vegetable juice and Campbell’s Healthy Request soups, which are marketed on the premise that they are healthy, were among the starless, according to the article.
Many companies make the claim that their products are healthy based on the fact that those products meet somewhat weak guidelines established by the Food and Drug Administration. But Hannaford’s health standards go much further than the FDA and many foods that the government says are nutritional Hannaford identifies otherwise.
Of course, spokespeople from the corporate food industry voiced irritation at Hannaford ratings, saying that the ratings were unfair and based on an unrealistic idea of what Americans are willing to eat. But the reality of what Americans are willing to eat is, in fact, the problem. It’s admirable that Hannaford has the integrity to point out to its customers that most of the products they are selling should only be consumed in very limited quantities.
It’s really not all that hard to figure out what is healthy and what is not – items that are embedded in layers of packaging tend to be unhealthy, while unprocessed vegetables and whole grains tend to good for you. But it does get a little frustrating when every major food corporation is spending loads of money trying to convince people to betray their own common sense. Although it’s a disturbing sign that a company looking out for the best interests of their customers and being honest with them merits front-page attention, it’s nice to hear that the company is one being run by people from around here.
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