Editorial Director Kara Chiles finds herself at the intersection of flavor and feeling and takes a moment to reflect on how they intertwine.
The tent outside the Anaheim convention center was packed. Free food is better than a pied piper for luring adults and these were hungry. And no ordinary crumb of bread or sip of water would do. These nibblers had an appetite for the future and this was the tasting pavilion at Expo West, the industry mecca for natural foods and products.
These are suppliers, entrepreneurs and diehard foodies who know their grass-fed from their gluten-free. And they were looking for the bites that we’ll all be craving in the year ahead.
One of the many ideas seen over and over again was mindfulness. Food can be more than sustenance; it can promote peace, a meaningful pause and a refocusing of one’s energies. It was especially gratifying as a, ahem, gut check of what we’ve been thinking and talking about here at Whole Foods Market. Mindfulness is meditation, yes. It’s also the little actions and tastes that add up to savoring life. Here are a few of ours:
Laughter makes everything taste better
Maybe you noticed the front page of our site looked a little different yesterday? We had such a good time with April Fools’ Day last year — teasing about a “Whole Ink” tattoo idea that keeps coming back around – that we decided to do it again. So, no, we aren’t really selling “full moon” yoga pants (at least not yet) but we like to add a little extra “flavor” on this day as a reminder that being able to laugh is as important as being able to taste.
One small action can lead to great change
This great big ball of a planet spends so much time nurturing us, we thought about ways we could nurture it back in celebration of Earth Month. 1 Green Thing opens in a new tab is a series of tips we’re sharing on this blog and on Facebook that makes being earth-friendly almost too easy opens in a new tab. Try switching to an Eco-Scale™ household cleaner opens in a new tab or buying pantry staples in bulk, cutting down on packaging. What we each do adds up.
Choosing what feels good
We know that what we put into our bodies impacts how we look and feel. Still, it’s surprising how easy it is to forget that when we’re hurried and hangry opens in a new tab. One of the main benefits of pause is the ability to truly make a choice rather than grab at whatever happens to be in our line of vision. We look for suppliers and growers that make thoughtful choices on their end, so that half of the work is done for you. When you put creamy buttery Mt. Tam cheese or MSC wild-caught scallops in your cart — two very different but amazing flavors featured this month — you’re choosing producers that care about process that sustain as well as nourish. That not only feels good, it tastes good too.
