Bulk Up For Fall - National Bulk Foods Week

Bulk up for fall!No, I don't mean eating all your kid's Halloween candy and putting on another 5 pounds.I remember helping my parents fill up bags from the bulk foods aisle when I was a kid - and pilfering little chocolate chips from the sweets bins when they weren't looking. My folks bought bulk because those beans, grains, nuts and seeds were so much cheeper!Now I buy in bulk for the same reasons: FACT: Organic bulk foods on average cost 89% less than their packaged counterparts.  Bulk foods also prevent a significant amount of packaging from entering landfills.FACT: Bulk foods need less transportation to get to your store. They don't require the packaging components that must be produced and transported prior to being filled. And the transportation is more efficient because bulk foods can be packed more densely on a truck.FACT: Making paper and cardboard pulls trees from our forests, dumps contaminated water into our streams and uses enormous amounts of energy resulting in grotesque levels of CO2 emissions pumped into our atmosphere.If you haven't bought bulk foods in the past, here are my top tips on buying in bulk:1. A busy bulk section is a fresh bulk section. Buy your bulk goods from a popular store so you'll know the foods are fresher.2. If you're celiac, it's probably best to avoid bulk foods. Because the foods are put into containers in close quarters, there may be cross contamination from gluten-containing foods.3. Go SUPER green by bringing your own clean reused plastic or fabric bags or containers to refill instead of using new plastic bus from the market.