Co-op News | Fall Quarterly 2017
Letters
Community
I want to say thank you to Melanie, the General Manager, for her column on discrimination ("Discrimination Has No Place at the Co-op"). I whole-heartedly agree that all members of our community share a responsibility to protect each other. I'm encouraged to know that if I witness harassment of anyone at the store, you'll take it seriously. I feel even better about shopping there now.
Thank you,
Brenna Silbory
Sweetened Deli Items
Dear Lauren,
Congratulations on the upcoming expansion! I think it's a smart and necessary move in today's market.
I would like to request that more attention be paid to the nutritional value and quality of deli items. One disturbing trend I've noticed in the past 10 years or so is the appearance of sweeteners in more and more of Co-op deli foods. Over 80 percent of processed foods are now sweetened. Please don't allow the Co-op to perpetuate and strengthen that trend in the deli. So many folks are fighting obesity and diabetes; we need to get back to whole foods without added sweeteners (maple syrup, sugar, agave, stevia, etc).
Please help the Co-op choose to be part of the solution and not contribute to the sugar epidemic with sweetened deli items (other than desserts!).
Thanks,
Karolyn
Dear Karolyn,
Thank you for the congratulations on our upcoming deli expansion at our Eureka location! I appreciate your email and hearing your desire for more focus being placed on the nutritional value of deli products. We strive to limit the use of sugar in recipes and are currently in the process of evaluating our deli recipes and working on changing and/or eliminating any unnecessary ingredients.
Some of the recipes or sub-ingredients that contain sugar—salads with vinegar, teriyaki sauce, tamari, barbeque sauce, miso—incorporate a sweetener to balance acidity or to round out the flavor. The photos of deli products you provided were very helpful for referencing. Looking over the ingredients on these products, I noticed they each contained either vinegar, curry paste, tamari or other acidic ingredients. These acidic ingredients are balanced out with the addition of small amounts of sweeteners for enhancing the overall flavor of the product.
I agree that we don’t want to add sweeteners unnecessarily and will be evaluating all of the current deli recipes over the next few months.
Thank you,
Lauren Fawcett, Food Service Director
