FREE! WINTER 2019 the wellness issue IN THE SPOTLIGHT Urban Moonshine BETWEEN THE ROWS Making Winter for Seeds THE DEEP DISH Garlic - A Natural Defense FOOD FOCUS Superfood Salads Jovial King Urban Moonshine Founder and Creative Director 1 under the sun QUARTERLY WINTER 2019 Winter Wellness … Getting through winter vs. enjoying winter Winter can be a tough time for many people, physically and mentally. Cold, dark, windy, catching 2 CO-OP CONVERSATIONS colds, icy roads, and more cold. For me, the challenge is not just getting through winter, it’s OPEN 8:00AM TO 7:00PM EVERYDAY A Letter From Glenn, GM 9 WASHINGTON STREET MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT changing my frame of mind to enjoy winter. Here are some ways that my family and I try to stay (802)388-7276 middlebury.coop healthy and enjoy winter: EVERYONE WELCOME! 3 A WORD FROM THE BOARD On Holding Our Attention The winter landscape is so dramatic and pristine, so I focus on getting outside regularly to enjoy it. My wife and I set a goal to go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing at least 10 times during WHY DOES THE CO-OP EXIST? 5 IN THE SPOTLIGHT the winter. My favorite area is the wooded trails just off the road to Blueberry Hill. So peaceful. The Co-op exists to help our member-owners Urban Moonshine Sometimes we are breaking fresh trail in the snow and we have the whole place to ourselves. customers and the community benefit from: • HEALTHY FOODS BETWEEN THE ROWS I like to spend time in front of a blazing fire with a good book. If you don’t have the fire option, • VIBRANT LOCAL ECONOMY 7 reading on the couch with a quilt is a close second. How many pages can you get through before • ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE & Making Winter for Seeds falling asleep? ENERGY EFFICIENT PRACTICES • COOPERATIVE DEMOCRATIC OWNERSHIP 9 SEASONAL HERB CALENDAR I’m not the type to go to the gym for exercise, though this would be a good idea. Instead, I love • LEARNING ABOUT THESE VALUES Keeping Well All Year Long the challenge of riding my bike to work in winter. Part of the fun is seeing people’s reactions to me WHAT IS OUR BUYING CRITERIA? coming in with all my layers and ice crystals stuck to my eyebrows. My hero is Brian who works at the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op strives to select THE INSIDE SCOOP Addison Independent and rides his bike back and forth from Bristol all year-round. I don’t know if products that are local, organic, and free of: 11 riding in winter helps me stay healthy or actually has me catching colds more often, but it sure adds Meet Tracey, Wellness Manager • ARTIFICIAL PRESERVATIVES, COLORS, FLAVORS spice to life in winter. And the couch looks extra enticing when I get home. I’ve earned it! • ADDED HORMONES AND ANTIBIOTICS • TRANSFATS • PARABENS 12 RALLY FOR CHANGE I don’t take many herbal remedies, but when I’m starting to get the sniffles or scratchy throat, you • HIGH FRUTOSE CORN SYRUP Turning Point Center, Middlebury bet I’m reaching for the Vitamin-C and echinacea with goldenseal to nip it in the bud. I’m thankful to • ANIMAL TESTING the Wellness staff at the Co-op for helping me stay healthy in winter. 13 THE DEEP DISH Winter wellness for my family means lots of soup. How many different soups can we create this To contact the Board of Directors: Garlic - A Natural Defense winter? Always fun to try something new. I love cooking soup because it’s one of the most forgiving [email protected] foods to cook. It seems, no matter what I do, it almost always turns out okay. We often make a big pot (802) 388-7276 15 FOOD FOCUS: SALAD GREENS to last the whole week. It’s so nutritious and easy to heat up after working all day and coming home Let’s Dissect Your Mesclun in the dark. Soup, salad, good bread and a glass of wine. Perfect. If you would like to receive an electronic copy of this newsletter, or if you have any questions or comments please contact: 17 FOOD FOR ALL Another boost to my mental health in winter is to have something to look forward to in spring, like Karin Mott Finding a Place at the Co-op Table a vacation or planting the garden. Buying seeds in February and planting something every couple [email protected] of weeks into March is a great way to build anticipation for spring, which helps make winter seem to pass more quickly. (802) 388-7276 x307 Noticing seasonal changes outdoors also helps build the anticipation: birds becoming more BECOME A MEMBER! active, daylight getting longer, sap buckets appearing in February, cars stuck in muddy driveways. DISCOUNTS AT LOCAL BUSINESSES MEMBER DEALS PATRONAGE REFUND I wish you all a winter full of wellness. Slow down, make soup, read books, don’t listen to too much A VOICE AND A VOTE CONTRIBUTORS news, spend time with family or friends. Every week do something special: go out to dinner, get a [email protected] Shannon Foster massage, or go for a ski or snowshoe. Stacy Jones Emily Landenberger Glenn Lower Julie Mitchell Karin Mott Glenn Lower, General Manager Tam Stewart Middlebury Natural Food Co-op 1 1 2 Matthew B. Crawford, a research fellow at the begets a need for more stimulation; without it, a word from the board Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and one feels antsy, unsettled. Hungry, almost.” the author of The World Outside Your Head, ON HOLDING OUR ATTENTION recently had this to say: Okay, so if we find ourselves compulsively using By: Tam Stewart digital technology to the point that it makes us “Distractibility might be regarded as the mental unhealthy yet still wanting more, what’s to do? equivalent of obesity. The palatability of certain “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” writing in 1969: “When we speak of an kinds of mental stimulation seems to be Because in the end, as Simon said, consumption -William James information-rich world, we must understand that hard-wired, just as our taste for sugar, fat, and of too much information comes at the price of the wealth of information means a dearth of Earlier this year, Google published an academic salt is. When we inhabit a highly engineered, what is perhaps our most precious resource, our something else –a scarcity of whatever it is that information-saturated environment, the natural attention. paper describing a study performed by several of information consumes. What information its researchers, and the conclusions were not world begins to seem bland and tasteless, like consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the broccoli compared with Cheetos. Stimulation pretty. In effect, the paper described how the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of consumer technology industry’s business information creates a poverty of attention, and a model of generating advertising revenue based need to allocate that attention efficiently among Here are a few ways to curb your distractions: on capturing and holding users’ attention had the overabundance of information sources that Watch what you’re paying attention to. (There are apps for every device that can track the been so successful that it had already rewired might consume it.” many of our brains to crave a near-constant focus amount of time spent on, say, social media, or Fox News for that matter.) on our digital devices, especially our phones. Limit how often you check your devices. (For most people, checking email, Twitter or Facebook I should quickly add that for most of my adult life once a day turns out to be plenty.) I have used digital technology to make a living, to Turn off, or dial down notifications. (Too many are crazy-making.) learn and understand, to get and stay connected, Take a walk outside, and leave your phone behind. and to give back to my community. I am neither a tech zealot nor a Luddite. But I am concerned Don’t reach for your phone or tablet the moment you wake. (Read something substantial and about this matter because our Co-op is dedicated undistracting instead, like a book.) to the health and well-being of our entire Put your devices to bed an hour before you go to bed. (If you’ve ever noticed how hard it is to stop community, and the fact that our attention is surfing at night, it’s probably the harsh blue light from screens, plus adrenal-goosing click-bait, that tell being appropriated and disintegrated into increasingly thin slices is now widely understood your brain it better stay awake.) In the year 2000, the average human attention as a health issue with profound implications for our overall well-being. span was 12 seconds. In 2013, it was 8 seconds. The average attention span of goldfish is 9 seconds. You’re Invited to Help Update Our By-Laws! Here’s how we see the process unfolding: Here’s Tristan Harris, an ex-design ethicist at ~ Source: National Center for Google who The Atlantic called “the closest thing Biotechnology Information/NIH Your Board of Directors recently updated its January/February Silicon Valley has to a conscience”: “We now live Governance Policies and in the process noticed First draft will be shared with all member-owners in a world dominated by the race for our “You know that what you eat you are.” that our Co-op’s By-Laws could use some updating for feedback.