"green giant" news and stories

Whole Foods is no stranger to veggies – even the frozen kind, and it's no stranger to healthy food. And for folks who can't quite get the two of them in synch, the natural-food grocery giant is now doing the thinking for you -- this week officially launching a new line of eight frozen vegetable blends designed to pack specific nutritional punches.

Beans and Greens, for instance, is a high-fiber-and-iron blend of kidney beans, great northern beans and kale. Leafy Greens is a high vitamin A mixture of collards, kale and mustard greens. Garden Blend hits vitamins A and C with carrots, broccoli and sugar snap peas. It also includes single veggie packages of collard greens and blue curled kale – two of the most nutrient-dense vegetables around.

"There was definitely a plan to make sure we were hitting nutrient density and creating a product that was more than just a bag of frozen vegetables," said Chris Slick, Whole Foods' Senior Global Coordinator for Exclusive and Store Brands.

You had to work late. The traffic on the commute home was horrible. You're tired. You're hungry. But you've got to get dinner for the family on the table now. What do you do?

You could resort to picking up a bucket from the Colonel on your way home, or call for pizza delivery, but you're better than that, right? Apparently, you are, according to a study by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families that did the first academic study to track American families moment by moment as they make dinner. They had expected to see a lot more takeout in working families but what they really saw was that 70% of the households in the study cooked at home. However, these "home-cooked" meals heavy reliance on "convenience foods."

However, these convenience foods, things that augment home cooking, didn't necessarily make dinner preparation any faster or easier. In fact, the difference in time to prepare dinner between a household that relied on convenience foods like boxed mixes, packaged vegetables, and pre-made stirfries and a household that made everything from scratch, was not statistically significant.

Really? You mean all this time I've been using Hamburger Helper, and I could have made lasagna from scratch in the same amount of time?!?!

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