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This veggie burger is so juicy it literally bleeds

Disclaimer: This burger is not vegetarian. Shutterstock

This veggie burger is so juicy it literally bleeds

By on May 24, 2016Share

At this point, we all know how bad meat is for the planet. A short list of the impacts of meat cultivation on land include deforestation, overgrazing, compaction, and soil erosion. One pound of beef requires about 1,800 gallons of water to produce. And our carnivorous tendencies produce, according to some estimates, as much as 50 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than cars, planes, trains and ships combined.

But it’s delicious, which is probably why 84 percent of vegetarians eventually go back to eating it (including this writer and at least 20 percent of the Grist staff). A person can only convince themselves that veggie burgers don’t taste like compacted sawdust for so long — until, possibly, now. A Los Angeles-area startup claims to have produced a veggie burger that can meet all your red-blooded desires.

Beyond Meat creates meat products sans meat, and their latest venture, the Beyond Burger, promises to look, taste, and feel just like the real thing. And apparently there’s an eager market for it: The Beyond Burger launched in the meat aisle — right alongside beef, poultry, pork, and lamb — at a Whole Foods in Boulder, Colo., Monday, and sold out within an hour, according to the company.

Unlike most veggie burgers, which are commonly blends of black beans and soy mash, the Beyond Burger is made of 20 grams of pea protein. The reviews, so far, are positive: A Whole Foods exec said it “tasted, felt and chewed like any other burger.” (Although, given that Whole Foods is selling it, maybe take that with a grain of organic, free-range salt.) It also looks like one — the burger “bleeds” beet juice when you bite into it.

Here it is, in all its flesh-free glory:

Plant-based alternatives to animal products make up a burgeoning trend: The New York Times reports that foods made from plant protein grew almost 9 percent from 2014 to 2015 — nearly three times the growth of overall food sales.

Unfortunately for vegetarians — or anyone — hankering for a convincing slab of pea protein to throw on the grill this summer, you’re going to have to wait: The Beyond Burger is currently only available in the Boulder Whole Foods (know your audience, as they say), but the company hopes to expand to other markets next year.

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This veggie burger is so juicy it literally bleeds

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"Employees Are Bitter" as Whole Foods Chops Jobs and Wages

Mother Jones

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Whole Foods Market co-CEO and co-founder John Mackey has never hidden his disdain for labor unions. “Today most employees feel that unions are not necessary to represent them,” he told my colleague Josh Harkinson in 2013. That same year, Mackey echoed the sentiment in an interview with Yahoo Finance’s the Daily Ticker. “Why would they want to join a union? Whole Foods has been one of Fortune‘s 100 best companies to work for for the last 16 years. We’re not so much anti-union as beyond unions.”

On September 25, the natural-foods giant gave its workers reason to question their founder’s argument. Whole Foods announced it was eliminating 1,500 jobs—about 1.6 percent of its American workforce—”as part of its ongoing commitment to lower prices for its customers and invest in technology upgrades while improving its cost structure.” The focus on cost-cutting isn’t surprising—Whole Foods stock has lost 40 percent of its value since February, thanks to lower-than-expected earnings and an overcharging scandal in its New York City stores.

Sources inside the company told me that the layoffs targeted experienced full-time workers who had moved up the Whole Foods pay ladder. In one store in the chain’s South region, “all supervisors in all departments were demoted to getting paid $11 an hour from $13-16 per hour and were told they were no longer supervisors, but still had to fulfill all of the same duties, effective immediately,” according to an employee who works there.

I ran that claim past a spokesman at the company’s Austin headquarters. “We appreciate you taking the time to reach out and help us to set the record straight,” he responded, pointing to the press release quoted above. When I reminded him that my question was about wage cuts, not the announced job cuts, he declined to comment.

Another source, from one of Whole Foods’ regional offices, told me the corporate headquarters had ordered all 11 regional offices to reduce expenses. “They’ve all done it differently,” the source said. “In some regions, they’ve reduced the number of in-store buyers—people who order products for the shelves.”

I spoke with a buyer from the South region who learned on Saturday that, after more than 20 years with the company, his position had been eliminated. He and other laid-off colleagues received a letter listing their options: They could reapply for an open position or “leave Whole Foods immediately” with a severance package—which will be sweetened if they agree not to reapply for six months. If laid-off employees manage to snag a new position that pays less than the old one did, they are eligible for a temporary pay bump to match the old wage, but only for a limited time.

Those fortunate enough to get rehired at the same pay rate may be signing up for more work and responsibility. At his store, the laid-off buyer told me, ex-workers are now vying for buyer positions that used to be handled by two people—who “can barely get their work done as it is.”

My regional office source told me that the layoffs and downscaling of wages for experienced staffers is part of a deliberate shift toward part-time employees. Whole Foods has “always been an 80/20 company,” the source said, referring to it ratio of full- to part-time workers. Recently, a “mandate came down to go 70/30, and there are regions that are below that: 65/35 or 60/40.” Store managers are “incentivized to bring down that ratio,” the source added.

Employees working more than 20 hours per week are eligible for benefits once they’ve “successfully completed a probationary period of employment,” the Whole Foods website notes. But some key benefits are tied to hours worked. For example, employees get a “personal wellness account” to offset the “cost of deductibles and other qualified out-of-pocket health care expenses not covered by insurance,” but the amount is based on “service hours.”

And part-time employees tend not to stick around. My regional source said that annual turnover rates for part-timers at Whole Foods stores approach 80 percent in some regions. According to an internal document I obtained, the national annualized turnover rate for part-time Whole Foods team members was more than triple that of full-timers—66 percent versus about 18 percent—in the latest quarterly assessment. “Whole Foods has always been a high-touch, high-service model with dedicated, engaged, knowledgeable employeesâ&#128;&#139;,”â&#128;&#139; the source said. “How do you maintain that, having to constantly train a new batch of employees?”

Of course, Whole Foods operates in a hypercompetitive industry. Long a dominant player in natural foods, it now has to vie with Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and regional supermarket chains in the organic sector. Lower prices are key to staying competitive, and in order to maintain the same profit margins with lower prices, you have to cut your expenditures. Whole Foods’ labor costs, according to my regional source, are equal to about 20 percent of sales—twice the industry standard.

It’s not unusual for a publicly traded company to respond to a market swoon by pushing down wages and sending workers packing. But Whole Foods presents itself as a different kind of company. As part of its “core values,” Whole Foods claims to “support team member employee happiness and excellence.” Yet at a time when the company’s share price is floundering and its largest institutional shareholder is Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs—which owns nearly 6 percent of its stock—that value may be harder to uphold.

Workers join unions precisely to protect themselves from employers that see slashing labor costs as a way to please Wall Street. “There’s a fear of unions coming in, because employees are bitter,” the regional-office source said. “People talk about it in hushed tones.”

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"Employees Are Bitter" as Whole Foods Chops Jobs and Wages

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Seattle mayor wants to block Whole Foods because of its low wages

Seattle mayor wants to block Whole Foods because of its low wages

Dave Lichterman

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn says Whole Foods should pay more or get lost.

The Washington, D.C., city council made national news earlier this month with its effort to force Walmart to pay higher wages at six new stores the company hopes to build in the city.

A similar fight is afoot in Seattle — but over Whole Foods. Mayor Mike McGinn, who’s up for reelection this year, is leading the charge against a proposed new store in the West Seattle neighborhood. Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat reports:

“I’m setting a new standard here, that we are going to look at the wages they pay, and benefits, when a company wants to develop with land that involves public property,” McGinn told me in an interview. …

McGinn contended in a letter that the nonunion Whole Foods pays “significantly lower” wages and benefits than other grocery stores, including some already in West Seattle. So the idea of allowing Whole Foods to go in there violates the city’s social and economic justice goals.

Whole Foods, as you might imagine, was gobsmacked. The company is no stranger around these parts — it has six hugely popular Seattle-area stores, employing 1,500 workers.

Whole Foods claims it pays nonmanagement workers in Seattle an average of $16 an hour, plus health benefits, but McGinn disputes that claim.

“If Whole Foods wants to open up their books and prove to us that they provide equal pay and benefits to the other grocery stores, then that’s something we would definitely consider,” McGinn said.

To get his backing, Whole Foods needs to make “meaningful increases” in worker pay. If the store is allowed to open as is, it will only drag down wages at the other stores, causing a “race to the bottom,” he said. …

“This is a new effort, and we’ll be looking at the wages and benefits of any large companies that want to develop using public property.”

The Stranger reports that the planned Whole Foods development is also “opposed by a coalition of labor, businesses, and residents, who worry about the project’s impact on traffic congestion, pedestrian safety, living wage jobs, and small local businesses.” And the alt-weekly notes that “Whole Foods is notoriously anti-union while the national supermarket chains it competes with here—Safeway, Albertsen’s, and QFC/Kroger—are all union shops.”

McGinn doesn’t actually have the power to block the store. Whole Foods is seeking to buy a public alleyway as part of its development plan, but the city council will make the final decision on that. Still, McGinn said he’s using the case to take a stand on income inequality.

Meanwhile, in D.C., Mayor Vincent C. Gray will make the final call on the Walmart controversy. He could either sign or veto a city council measure that would force Walmart to pay a living wage to workers in the city.

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Flies that eat organic live longer, make more fly babies

Flies that eat organic live longer, make more fly babies

Scientists may be split on whether organic foods are better for human health. But a new study published in PLOS ONE presents evidence that organic foods help you live longer and make more babies — if you’re a fruit fly.

T. ChapmanMaybe organic food just puts flies in the mood?

Researchers at Southern Methodist University fed fruit flies extracts of organic or conventional versions of bananas, potatoes, raisins, or soybeans from a Whole Foods in Texas. (Unlike those organic-loving rats, the flies didn’t get to choose their foods.)

“Flies were then subjected to a variety of tests designed to assess overall fly health.” The results? “Flies raised on diets made from organically grown produce had greater fertility and longevity,” according to the study.

Maybe this explains why buzzing fruit flies plague your indoor compost bin (or, for that matter, the Whole Foods sample trays)? Best break out the organic apple cider vinegar!

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Libertarian Propaganda With Your Organic Arugula?

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If you shop at Whole Foods, you’ve probably seen the ads at the cash register for Conscious Capitalism. Co-written by the store’s founder, John Mackey, and Raj Sisodia, chairman of a nonprofit called Conscious Capitalism, Inc., the book bills itself as a tale of “Mackey’s own awakenings as a capitalist.” While Mackey serves up plenty of cheerful exhortations and pithy self-help tips, however, the only “awakening” that you’re likely to get from reading this 313-page apologia for libertarianism is a sense that he ought to stick to selling groceries. (Read my interview with Mackey here.)

To give Mackey his due, he proved that many shoppers are willing to pay a premium for foods that are healthy, sustainably produced, and sold by workers who earn decent wages and health benefits. His book strives to show CEOs in other industries that they can follow his lead. “We need a richer and more ethically compelling narrative to demonstrate to a skeptical world the truth, beauty, goodness, and heroism of free-enterprise capitalism,” he writes. “Otherwise we risk the continued growth of increasingly coercive governments, the corruption of enterprises through crony capitalism, and the consequential loss of both our freedom and our prosperity.”

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