While in the big city of Los Angeles (specifically Costa Mesa California) on our recent trip we needed a couple of items to add to our meal.  In the past we had gone to Trader Joe's frequently when we would travel to the city for various reasons, the closest Trader Joe's is 3 hours south of our home. If you are not familiar with Trader Joe's, it is a "yuppie" natural foods market touting organics and whole foods. So, we found a Trader Joe's market in Costa Mesa thinking we would easily find the items we needed. We were looking for several fresh items to add to a salad. After changing our diet a year ago we have found that traveling while following a raw, living foods diet is actually very easy if you can find small items at local markets to add to your menu. We were in search of one carrot, possibly a tomato and some fresh greens. Upon entering the store we were very shocked at the amount of plastic that we saw. There was nothing we could purchase outside a plastic package! Even Safeway or Von's has fresh organic produce available that you can buy just one of, without purchasing plastic!

We did purchase a small package of organic greens for a salad. It was tasty that evening but we did notice that it only stayed fresh for about 2 days. To compare, when we had left home we had taken some greens that we had in the fridge that were already a couple days old. They stayed fresh for about 7 days total, while the Trader Joe's plastic packaged greens were only fresh for 2 (we had removed the plastic packaged greens the night we purchased them and wrapped them in wet paper towels in a wax paper bag).

As you can see, we had an excellent start to a wonderful salad.


It is a sign of the times. Even an apple has a sticker on it. Gone are the days when you could purchase items without a label attached so the checker would know how much to charge for the single item you wanted to purchase. Digital scanning is the future, even for our fruits and vegetables. The new system will be a "laser label" on all fruits and vegetables to avoid the sticker that is currently used, and track it's source in cases on contamination. I'm not sure if this is the answer, but I do know it will mean that I won't have any trash (even as small as a sticker) to throw away when purchasing produce.

This article by Dr Weil talks about the plastic produce subject, I still don't agree with plastic. If at all possible, purchase fresh produce from a farmer's market  first, then a market that doesn't package everything in plastic. Not only is produce better for you when it's not packaged in plastic, it's less trash in the landfill.