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Whole Foods Market first opened its doors in 1980 with the mission to push the dialogue around food, nourishment, and the environment. Forty-one years later, Whole Foods Market has set the gold standard for high-quality food retail, and rigorous Quality Standards have been integrated into almost everything the company does.
Behind the aisles, Jamie Yael Katz (who started her career as a Whole Foods Market cashier) and the rest of the Whole Foods Market Quality Standards team sets standards with your health and the environment in mind. Whether that's visiting the farms producing bananas as part of Whole Foods Market’s growing "Sourced for Good" program or revising their 150 banned ingredient list for food to ensure it correlates with modern science and research.
In this episode, we discuss Whole Foods Market's approach to food ingredients, making shopping for things like seafood, eggs, and meat a stress-free process and why when you choose to purchase in Whole Foods Market, whether it's their Whole Foods Market and 365 by Whole Foods Market private label brands or anything else, you're never compromising on quality for you or your family.
Thank you to Whole Foods Market for sponsoring this episode!
Show Notes:
Jamie began her journey at Whole Foods Market as a cashier, and then became an In-Store Educator and continued her personal education around Whole Foods Market's product standards
Jamie views Whole Foods Market's role as connecting quality suppliers to consumers
Whole Foods Market asks a lot in terms of quality from its suppliers, and the standards are continually refined to keep up with current research
Whole Foods Market often asks suppliers to reformulate just to be able to get their product on the store shelves because the standards are so high
The Sourced for Good program supports communities and suppliers, and supports positive and fair working conditions through international certifiers
Jamie's team "sets the fences" for product purchasing, and works with those sourcers to ensure product excellence in every product sold
All seafood sold at Whole Foods Market is from fisheries certified to meet the Marine Stewardship Council Standard for sustainable fishing or rated either “Green” or “Yellow” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program.
Whole Foods Market has not sold eggs from caged birds since 2004, and they have rigorous standards that specifically prioritize the birds' quality of life
The 365 brand by Whole Foods Market allows Jamie's team to pioneer their own standards
Social accountability is a huge priority of the brand and they're pushing those standards across many product categories
Resources:
Click here to for a department-by-department deep dive of their Quality Standards: https://bit.ly/3yW0I6R
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Be Well By Kelly is a production of Crate Media
