What is the best way to support organic products when shopping at a large grocery store?

Question

I would like to encourage my local large grocery store to make more organic foods available and, as a more general goal, to support organic farming. I have two choices as far as local grocery stores: Stop and Shop, a generic grocery store that provides some organic food (maybe 5% of the store inventory) or Whole Foods, a more specialized and more expensive grocery store that primarily carries organic and more "natural" products. Ignoring expense to me, do you think I should buy organic food whenever possible at Stop and Shop (positive reinforcement) or switch over to Whole Foods and thereby deprive Stop and Shop of a customer (negative reinforcement)? Which is the more effective approach?

Answer 1

Any way you go about it, you are voting with your dollar.  Regardless of where you buy the organic food, you still choose to buy organic and that supports organic farming.

If you feel more attached to Stop and Shop, then yeah keep buying organic things from them and ask for organic items they don't have and just maybe they will order those products, thus getting them to have more selection of organic products over time.

Answer 2

All food has to pass health and safety rules and regulations.

If food was unsafe it would be withdrawn.

I agree that the price of organic is a joke but I will still buy organic whenever possible. If more people stuck together and did the same thing then eventually the price of organic would come down - it certainly has in the UK.

As to the original question:-

Keep buying the organic produce that is available from Stop and Shop and the products that aren't - buy from elsewhere.

Think globally act locally.

:)

Answer 3

Tough question. Often the food at Whole Foods is a little more expensive because more of the lifecycle of the product is certified rather than what could be called a snapshot certification as you would see at your local grocery store. But, the brands that you would buy at a local grocery store are often from bigger companies and sending them a signal reinforces the demand for organic goods prompting them to produce more eco-friendly products. So which one - well you also might take an even much more holistic look at the whole thing and consider their use of energy - which has the smaller footprint.

Answer 4

Sorry to inform you of this but you are paying a heavy premium for food that at best is no better then non organic. The only advantages to organic are:

Since they have no preseervatives their usable life is cut in half.

Since they were grown with no pesticides germs which would ordinarily be killed thru normal processing survive. This leads to a tripling of cases of e-coli etc.

You like paying up 300% more for a product.

For these and other reasons I will not buy so called, organic products.

Answer 5

By the organic foods that are available at Stop and Shop and buy the rest at Whole Foods. You can ask the manager at Stop and Shop to stock more organic products, but it won't have any effect unless about 5,000 other people ask too.