Very cool people at Slow Food Philly

Recently I met Richard Goldberg of Helen's Pure Foods and Dale Reese of Martindale's Natural Foods at a meeting of Slow Food Philadelphia that I attended for my Day Job. Martindale's is apparently the oldest health food store founded in 1869. That's a full 20 years before white people decided to populate Oklahoma. Kind of mind-boggling! I love Martindales for a number of reasons, but the best one is that they clearly mark their shelf tags with a red dot for every GF item in the store. And that's a lot of red dots! One time when I found a clearly marked GF item without a red dot, I brought it to an employees attention and she fixed it right away. Helen's Hummuses and spreads are made fresh locally and only shipped within something like a 100 mile radius. Every container of Helen's Spreads I have read shows no gluten content. They apparently had a gf labeling issue and had to mark out "gluten free" on a bunch of their Michele's Hummus and Spreads line because of soy sauce, but Richard tells me they are changing the recipe to make it GF this year. I advise a roadtrip to Springfield to visit Martindale's, and pick up some Helen's Pure Foods hummus while you are there!