Health food store

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A health food store is a type of grocery store that primarily sells natural and organic foods, local produce, and often nutritional supplements. Health food stores often offer foods that attract people with special diets, such as people with wheat and gluten allergies, diabetics, vegans, and vegetarians, and those interested in eating local, organic, and natural foods.

[edit] Health food

The term health food has no official definition but many would agree that health foods help to provide optimum nutrition. Therefore, health foods could be defined as foods that are beneficial for good health.

Some terms that are often associated with health food are macrobiotics, natural foods, organic foods, and also, whole foods. Macrobiotics is a diet focusing primarily on whole cereals. Whole cereals, along with other whole foods, are foods that are as close to their whole and natural state as possible. They are minimally processed and generally have their fiber and hull intact and are considered more nutritious. Natural foods are simply foods that contain no artificial ingredients. Organic foods are foods that are grown without the use of conventional and artificial pesticides and must meet certain organic standards.

[edit] The history of health food stores

With the increase of interest in health food spurred by early health pioneers such as Sylvester Graham, Horace Greeley, John Harvey Kellogg, George Ohsawa, Ellen White, and others, many now commonplace foods first entered the market in the late 1800s and early 1900s. As early as the 1920s and 1930s health food stores started opening in the United States selling such products as blackstrap molasses and brewer's yeast. [1] Health food stores became much more common in the 1960s in connection to the newly emerging ecology movement and counterculture.

Many health food stores are worker owned cooperatives and consumers' cooperatives due in part to the growth of popularity during the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the ability of cooperative buying power to lower the higher cost of some health foods.

Over the last decade, health food, and especially organic food, has entered the mainstream. Companies such as Whole Foods Market, a large multinational corporation, have profited greatly and grown substantially during this expansion.

Aviva Natural Health is a prominent natural health retailer in Canada.