Top 10 Reasons Why Bulk Bin Shopping Is Awesome

1. You avoid single use plastic bags. Duh. Especially if you bring your own cloth bags.
   
2. You pay only for food. Not packaging, not marketing. Just food
3. There's no way to hide food inflation with smaller bags and boxes.
   
4. Using bulk ingredients means you are eating unprocessed and minimally processed foods, which is tons better for you than stuff that comes in boxes and cans.
5. Scrutinizing labels with unrecognizable ingredients and frequently bogus nutrition claims becomes a thing of the past.
6. It saves money! Bulk food is less expensive than processed, packaged food. A lot less expensive.
7. Want to eat local? Bulk bin sections often tell you where stuff was grown, and feature local products.
8. Bulk food is easier to carry and store. What used to take up bags and bags, and fill up cabinets now takes up a lot less space, without all the bulky boxes, trays, packaging and air filled plastic bags.
9. Your pantry will look like a page from a Crate and Barrel catalog, with all that food in pretty glass jars.
10. Did I mention the lack of plastic?
    

Here we go again

It appears that some celebrities haven't gotten the message that endorsing products that are horrible for the planet is not OK.


"Shh! No one tell me how stupid I look!"

A couple of days ago, Smartwater (made by Glaceau, owned by Coca-Cola) released a video featuring Jennifer Aniston and designed to 'go viral'. I won't give them the satisfaction of putting a link to it here, but a Google search will turn it up pretty quickly.

Glaceau (once again, owned by Coca-Cola) must be reacting to dragging bottled water sales. People are figuring out that bottled water is a stupid waste of money in addition to being horrible for the environment. So they are using the oldest trick in the book, sex- better yet a sexy celebrity- to push their product.

Sigh. I've already put a fair amount of effort into telling Ellen Degeneres that this kind of thing isn't smart. The era of pasting a celebrity's face on a horrible product and thereby making it 'cool' has passed. Who wants to send Jen a reality check?