With Friday’s blockbuster news of Amazon buying Whole Foods Market for nearly $14 billion, I gave my own analysis on Organic Insider about how this would impact the organic food industry.

Yet, wanting to hear from the people who actually run organic food companies, I reached out to a handful of CEOs and founders, all of whom sell their products to Whole Foods, to see what they think of the deal.

It was important for me to get insight from CEOs and founders of small, medium and large organic brands since companies of varying size may view this acquisition in a different light. Read more »

Yesterday, in a blockbuster deal, Amazon agreed to purchase Whole Foods Market in an all-cash deal for $42 per share or nearly $14 billion.

While there is a tremendous amount of analysis about what Amazon’s plans will be for the stores and how this will forever change the overall grocery landscape, I took a different approach. Read more »

Each day, more and more news comes out about the harm that pesticides can do to our bodies.

This time, a report out of Europe says that pesticides can cause brain damage. Yes, brain damage. Read more »

Two days before President Obama left office, he passed very important Organic Animal Welfare Standards, which will vastly improve how animals are treated. (Why he waited until the last minute to do this is a whole other story.)

Nevertheless, he pushed them through, and it appears that the Trump administration is looking to reverse course and kill them. Read more »

Whether you’re new to organic or have been eating it for decades, here is a very likely scenario when you go to buy eggs.

You stand in the refrigerated section of the market, look at all of options, check out the prices and make a decision largely based on the packaging of each brand.

Some have attractive pictures of rolling farmland, others show actual farmers, some have photos of the animals. Most certainly, the brands are using buzz words such as “cage-free”, “sunlit porches”, “omega 3-s” or “heritage breed”.

Are these brands being falsely deceptive?

I don’t believe so at all. They are trying to make the packaging as attractive as possible, and rightly so. I would do the exact same thing.

While brand recognition and price are key factors, what the packaging looks like and the emotional reaction that it has on you can heavily influence purchasing decisions.

As I have written about before, all organic eggs are NOT the same — all birds are fed differently and are treated differently — but people forget this and may get seduced by wholesome, folksy packaging.

So, I took a sampling of 8 different organic egg brands and pulled their ratings from the Cornucopia’s Organic Egg Scorecard to see how they stacked up versus the attractiveness of the packaging.

The Organic Egg Scorecard classifies each brand into one of five categories:

“5-Egg” Rating: “Exemplary” – Beyond organic

“4-Egg” Rating: “Excellent” – Organic promoting outdoor access

“3-Egg” Rating: “Good to Very Good” – Organic, complying with minimum USDA standards

“2-Egg” Rating: “Fair” – Some questions remain concerning compliance with organic standards

“1-Egg” Rating: “Industrial Organics” – No meaningful outdoor access and/or non-transparent

Here is what I found.

VITAL FARMS === 4-EGG RATING

Read more »

It is bad enough that we have to deal with genetically-engineered foods, but now we are facing the prospect of something potentially even more scary: genetically-engineered trees.

Tree biotech company ArborGen is requesting an unprecedented USDA approval for its genetically-engineered (GE), “freeze tolerant” eucalyptus. If the USDA grants this approval, it will be the first-ever GE-forest tree to be commercially grown in the U.S., allowing ArborGen to plant massive, unregulated GE-tree farms. Read more »

As someone who has eaten close to 100% organic since 2001, my personal experience is that women are more concerned than men about the quality of food they are putting into their bodies.

While this is based on anecdotal evidence, there are a few data points to back this up.

The Pew Research Center’s recent report called The New Food Fights: U.S. Public Divides Over Food Science concluded that women are more likely to care about GMOs than men.

According to Google Analytics, approximately 2/3rds of Living Maxwell readers – people reading about organic – are women. Read more »