"market" news and stories

Photo: Amazon.com.

'The French Market'
by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde
HarperCollins Publishers -- 2005
Buy it on Amazon

Although glorious American markets do exist, nothing quite compares to the French marketplace -- the endless barrels of olives alone distinguish them. But in the next-best-thing category, the author of "My French Kitchen" attempted -- and succeeded -- to capture the art of French market-inspired cooking yet again in "The French Market: More Recipes from a French Kitchen."

French cooking at its core makes strong use of fresh produce, with dishes like the traditional tomato salad, which frugally pairs tomatoes with parsley and heaps of pepper to magnificent results. "The French Market" seems to share this proclivity for cooking with tight ingredient lists, relying largely on the flavors of quality produce -- and the occasional bouquet garni.

See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

The New York Times seems to think so. Indeed, many grocery stores in urban areas are closing up shop, and all that's left is a big open lot and a smattering of mom and pop convenience stores left in their wake. But despite the name, convenience stores aren't always, well, that convenient, especially when you're in need of fresh fruit and veggies, low-fat snacks and fresh poultry or seafood.

A study by New York's Department of City Planning estimated that over 750,000 New Yorkers live five blocks or more from a supermarket. And when that's the case, most people opt to drive or cab it to the store, especially if they have lots of shopping to do or little ones in tow. And at the end of a long work day, many people just don't have the energy - or the time - to stroll down to the grocery. (The study also found that there is enough need for 100 additional supermarkets across the city).

So what's a hungry person to do? Most people simply go without fresh produce and other things that are carried by larger supermarkets. Others are currently shopping at a store, but worry about it closing, because the only other option is miles away.

What about you? Did you or someone you know ever have trouble getting to a decent grocery store, especially if you live in a populated urban area?

Supposedly, everything is bigger in Texas and up until now, that adage has certainly held true for Whole Foods Market, which has their 80,000-sq. foot flagship store located in Houston. The company is now planning an even larger store for San Jose, California. At 86,000-sq. feet, the store will be the largest Whole Foods in the US and probably will hold the title for some time despite the fact that Whole Foods does seem to love large stores. With restaurants and spas opening inside supermarkets, what was once one-stop-shopping is now a shopping experience.

But is this getting out of hand? How large can a grocery store before it gets too big? This new Whole Foods, which will be located at the intersection of Blossom Hill Road and Almaden Expressway, will take up about 2 acres without including space for loading docks and parking. It's safe to say that it isn't exactly necessary to have a store that large, but do you prefer to seek out the biggest stores for your shopping when given the choice between a larger and smaller store of the same type?

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Obesity in Britain, as it is in the US, is often referred to as an epidemic due to the quickly expanding waistlines of so many in the country. The Department of Health puts the number of overweight or obese people in Britain at 24.6 million, or around 40% of the total population, and they expect to see numbers increase over the next decade. People in the US are slightly healthier than they were lest year, in part because of trends towards healthier eating (even though we are still seeing a tremendous amount of very unhealthy food out there), but this same trend is not noticeable in the UK, according to a new study.

This study, which surveyed more than 12 million consumers about their shopping habits over the past four years, found that only 8% of Britons made an effort to buy healthier, more nutritious foods, such as organic products and "food with labels such as fresh, lite or low fat." 44% of British shoppers had made no effort to buy healthier foods, sticking with "value or extra-value lines" of products." Interestingly, there wasn't much difference in price between the baskets of the healthy shoppers and those who opted for cheaper, less nutritious foods. The healthy baskets cost an "average of £71.78compared with £71.18 for an unhealthy one," which means that most shoppers were buying what they perceived as value at a cost to their health and without saving anything in their wallets.

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Marion Nestle says that when she talks to people, she hears "this phenomenal sense of despair about their inability to do anything about climate change, or the disparity between rich and poor." A despair that she says is alleviated by a trip to the grocery store where "they can make decisions about what they are buying and send a very clear message." Perhaps people really do express these sentiments to her, but unless specifically directed, it seems unlikely that most people make the connection between relieving their feeling of despair over the "disparity between rich and poor" and shopping for groceries - in this case, probably organic ones.

But it is true that consumers have the power to change the marketplace and that they are doing it every day with the decisions they make at the grocery store, as The Economist mentioned in a recent article. The organic food industry is growing by leaps and bounds and there is an ever-increasing call for higher-quality food, held to higher standards, whether they are organic, local, fair-trade, hormone-free, etc.

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