"Local" Grocery Shopping

Since I was traveling back from a trip to a friend’s in North Carolina this weekend, I missed the Sunday farmer’s market. Sadly, I was left to do my big weekly grocery at Whole Foods. Not only is it less fun to shop at the grocery store, I find it very frustrating to shop in Whole Foods, which claims to stock “local” products and find only fruits and vegetables from California (with a dash of Mexico and Florida). Looking around at all the nice looking food, all I could see was: California, California, California.

The only produce I could find that was actually local was two heads of VA lettuce, two VA heirloom tomatoes, and a container of NJ blueberry’s (still pretty far away, but I’ll take what I can get). I also noticed that there was very limited selection of local meat or cheese.

I’m going to go to another farmer’s market Wed. or Thurs. this week, since I am lucky enough to live somewhere that has multiple farmers’ markets during the summertime. But, I think that we ought to challenge our grocery stores to do better and actually stock local food—maybe they could shoot for as many local items as they have signs and posters claiming to be “local”. Especially considering all the fantastic farms in the area.