What is a Health Food Store (in 2024)?

When my mother opened Debra’s Natural Gourmet in 1989, “Health Food Store” was code for “No chocolate, gluey spaghetti, bitter fake meats, joyless Halloween, and weird birthday cake probably made with tofu.” It was the counterculture — and not in a cool way. I was 15, and I was appalled that all this would be pinned on me publicly.

Well, a lot has changed in the last 34 years. The health food store is no longer a culinary ghetto, a strange store full of strange products for strange people. Today your neighborhood health food store is first and foremost a community grocery store, open and inviting to all.
It just happens to be a grocery store with ethics and standards.

I of course don’t mean to imply other kinds of grocery stores don’t have their own ethics and standards. But there are some very particular ethics and standards specific to our kind of grocer.
And what are those standards? (If you really want to read in detail: see here).

“Health Food” usually still means zero tolerance around artificial ingredients. We’re not going to sell cigarettes, or Extremeflavorblast Doritos™.

We still believe in food that’s good for you (even if we can make money selling the other stuff). We still look for whole grains and unrefined sweeteners. But you know, if that fair trade chocolate Easter egg has a little white sugar, well… at least it’s organic white sugar. In other words, we pick and choose where we are going to be puritanical and where we’re going to show a little bend. We want to participate in h0lidays and celebrations, vs. boycott them.

Meanwhile, we’ve come full circle on the coffee and chocolate, and in fact embrace them now as superfoods. Yes, we still sell tofu (and it’s pretty good, actually, thank you), but we also sell some of the nicest grass-fed hot dogs and burger meat you can find.

Okay, everything I’ve said so far is about ingredients. It’s about the tangible. But to my mind, what makes a health food store truly special goes beyond that to the philosophical. We sell Fair Trade coffee, not because Fair Trade makes your morning cup measurably better, but because it makes the world better. We sell bulk / zero-waste beans and nuts and chocolate chips and spices for the same reason. We work with local farmers and farmer-producers for the same reason. We prioritize vendors we respect, who tell the truth, whose worldview and business models we respect, because it makes the world better. We believe you should have your cake and eat it too – and be proud of yourself after eating it. AND that there should be cake left for your children and grandchildren.

And wherever we compromise — because we do, again and again, because this is the real world after all — we hope it’s with our eyes wide open, thoughtfully and occasionally even ruefully. We agonize over some of these decisions. Nothing goes on our shelves without us looking at the ingredients, and weighing them against our standards. Nothing.

So, does all that make Debra’s special? Well, let me say first of all: YES! But, let me also say: Debra’s isn’t alone out there. We’re members of INFRA – the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association – a cooperative representing over 500 independent natural grocers around the country. It’s one of my great pleasures and responsibilities to sit on INFRA’s board of directors, and I get to know a lot of our members. And I can assure you, there are more than 500 of us out there doing what Debra’s does. Little stores smaller than your living room. Big stores that employ over 500 people. All doing it a little differently. But all doing it.

That’s what a health food store is.