Conscious Choice: Strength in Numbers

July 2002 | Editor’s Note

Strength in Numbers

In the early eighties I shopped at a tiny natural foods store a few blocks from where I lived in Lakeview. Rainbow Grocery was perhaps 600 square feet on the first floor of a two-flat next to the El tracks on Wellington Avenue. The wooden floors and shelves of the diminutive store were loaded with a variety of natural foods, from bulk grains to produce, and even some frozen goods. I was able to buy everything I needed there. Customers were expected to bag their own groceries, preferably in their own bags. I think I paid a fee to shop at Rainbow, which means I was participating in a co-op. If I had known more about co-ops at the time I probably could have volunteered to work a few hours at the store in lieu of the membership fee.

As the natural foods business grew, Rainbow spun off Foodworks, a store four or five times the size of the little co-op. Eventually, as Foodworks thrived, Rainbow was closed. We’d been lured by the broader selection the larger store offered. Foodworks had shopping carts, room to maneuver them, and enough products to fill them up! I shopped there, but missed the cozy intimacy of Rainbow.

In the nineties, medium sized stores like Foodworks and Healthworks gave way to the mega health food stores — Whole Foods Market, Fresh Fields (since absorbed into Whole Foods), and Wild Oats Market. These stores have mind boggling arrays of natural foods and products. It is a testament to the success of the natural foods industry that such stores can compete at the level of Jewel or Dominick’s. And once again, we’re lured by the big selection and the convenience of one stop shopping for all of our food needs. Even better for the natural foods industry is the appeal these superstores hold for people who would never have set foot in the quaint little Rainbow Grocery.

Yet, even with such great resources as these, co-ops continue to provide their members with a good selection at good prices. Dennis Rodkin looks at three of the longest running food co-ops in the area. They’re three very different expressions of the venerable cooperative movement that has its roots in nineteenth century England. All are examples of what can be accomplished when people team up for a common goal.

Power of the Pen

Those of us who work in journalism often wonder if the words we write are having any effect in the real world. Michael Pollan need not worry. His books and articles on gardening and food production have made an impact. An article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine even caused one multi-national corporation to change its buying policy and another to withdraw its product from the market. The companies were McDonald’s and Monsanto and the "product" was a potato. It was reader response, in great numbers, that brought about these changes. Pollan’s most recent article on industrialized beef production may have similar effects. Jim Slama profiles the man and the mission. — Ross Thompson

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