Pickles: Whole Foods 365, Cascadian Farm Contain Natural Flavors
December 9th, 2007 at 03:18pm Under Food Alert
Greetings, Readers,
Can you help me with this problem? I would like to find a source for Dill Pickles that meets the following criteria:
- Organic
- Do not contain natural or artificial flavors
I would like to find a source for Sweet Pickles or Sweet Pickle Relish that meets the following criteria:
- Organic
- Do not contain natural or artificial flavors
- Sweetened with cane syrup or another natural, unprocessed sugar (not sweetened with plain old table sugar)
Neither Whole Foods 365 Brand Nor Cascadian Farm Pickles Are Chemical-Free
Go to any regular supermarket in America, along the lines of Safeway or Ralph’s and you won’t see, and won’t expect to see, organic pickles. Claussen’s, Vlassic’s, etc., and the other pickles you likely remember from childhood may have tasted good to you, but they are a concoction of pesticide-laden cucumbers and bizarre chemical additives. Surely, not something you should put in your mouth.
So, you continue on down the road to your natural foods store - be it Whole Foods or another store offering organics, eager to get your hands on some human-friendly pickles to bring dash to a winter potato salad or zest to a summer sandwich. You start looking at the labels of what’s available and that sinking feeling sets in.
Whole Foods used to carry Cascadian Farm pickles before making their recent Napoleonic move of replacing most of the brand choices in their markets with their own 365 label. But, in this case, it hardly matters. Read the ingredients on Cascadian Farm’s pickles and you will see that ugly two-word phrase: natural flavors. This means chemicals from the New Jersey Turnpike that are being used to trick you and your tastebuds into thinking you’re eating a tasty food, rather than actually eating a whole, wholesome, natural food that has been prepared with care to actually taste tasty. So, Cascadian Farm’s is being dishonest, hiding behind FDA legislation that allows them to put food on market shelves without disclosing the ingredients of that food.
Next, you pick up Whole Foods 365 Brand Pickles and you have an episode of deja vu. Aping the very products they’ve replaced with their own company brand, Whole Foods is being dishonest, adding ‘natural flavors’ to their own pickles. Where, may I ask, is the value or justice in calling Whole Foods Pickles organic if they contain chemicals? Natural flavors are not organic…they are mystery meat chemicals made in a lab by white-coated scientists who will not tell you what they are putting in the jar of ‘food’ they are concocting. Natural flavors are a legal lie to you, the consumer. All you know when you see ‘natural flavors’ on a label is that the manufacturer of the product has something to hide.
And these are my two choices where I live. The 2 ‘organic’ pickles available here contain natural flavors. As a result, I’ve had no pickles in months and both my husband and I are feeling depressed. I’ve spent hours on the Internet, looking for a place to order organic pickles without chemical additives and have come up empty handed.
Can you help me? Is there an organic pickle brand where you live that doesn’t contain natural or artificial flavors? Can you read some labels in your home town and see if ANY company in the USA is actually producing wholesome pickles any more? If you can find a US company that meets my criteria, I would surely appreciate you sharing a link and ingredient list with me in the comments, below.
I did contact Whole Foods to ask them why they are putting chemicals in their pickles rather than providing a ‘whole food’ that tastes good because it’s made properly. Unfortunately, they did not respond, and this represents the 3rd inquiry I have sent to this huge corporation without receiving a reply. I used to be Whole Foods’ #1 fan, but as the years go by, I become increasingly less impressed with the Whole Foods corporation. Their success has turned them away from their original commitments and they are becoming little better than Safeway in their care for their customers’ needs or health. What a let-down!
I did not bother to contact Cascadian Farm, having attempted to have rational dealings with them last year over the fact that they punch holes in their frozen vegetable bags, allowing their food to be freezer burned and filled with industrial dirt on its way to your table. They feel this is a reasonable thing to do, and couldn’t seem to understand why I disagreed.
Unfortunately, the first step to eating well in America is to realize that the FDA does little to protect consumers from toxins and pollutants that should not be eaten. My long-term plan about the pickles is to begin to grow my own cucumbers and make my own pickles when my husband and I can afford a piece of land of our own. We’re hoping this will happen in our near future, so that we can be more self-sufficient, depending less and less on unscrupulous corporations to feed us. My mother used to make her own pickles, and believe me, they put to shame anything you’ve ever eaten out of a commercial jar. We’re working our way toward this type of self-reliance, but in the meantime, we’d surely like to know if you know of a company that makes real pickles that taste good because they’re made well. Please, do comment if you can.
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