Food

Starting this week, Whole Foods shoppers in Oakland can pick up nutrition and fitness tips to go with their groceries. The natural food retailer has just launched the Wellness Club—a program that offers classes, workshops, lectures and a 10 percent discount on food products that the program deems whole, unprocessed and healthy. Oakland’s Lake Merritt store is the only Whole Foods location on the West Coast to host the pilot program, which will operate in five sites throughout the country. The Dedham, Massachusetts and Chicago, Illinois programs began earlier this summer while the New York City and Princeton, New Jersey pilots are set to launch this fall.

Numi Tea imports rare and unique teas with real fruit, flowers and spices that no other companies are—most of their supplies come from China and India—and packages them in brightly colored boxes with artwork designed by cofounder Reem Rahim.

This September, in an effort to encourage public engagement in the fight against hunger, Alameda County’s Community Food Bank is working with 200 food banks nationwide to promote “Hunger Action Month.”

Oakland resident Kendra Poma said she noticed food swaps—local barering meetups for gardeners and cooks—sprouting up all over the country. “I couldn’t find one happening in Oakland,” she said. So she started one.

To chants of “Si se puede!” eight young people stood smiling on stage at the New Parish club in downtown Oakland on Thursday night. They were there to tell the stories of the farmers and community members they had met while on a road trip across California to promote farm bill reform and to encourage young people to support new farm-related legislation.

If the phrase “gourmet cheese store” conjures up an image of the food elite batting around unpronounceable words in a stodgy storefront, check out Temescal’s Sacred Wheel. The shop, which opened in January on a quiet corner at 49th and Shattuck, offers mostly local cheeses in a hip atmosphere.

Summer is the time for cooling drinks, frozen concoctions and delicious bite-sized treats, and Oakland North hit the streets to find some of the tastiest and most original summer snacks in town. Check out the best of our finds this weekend, before summer is (almost) over!

From August 22 to September 2, 15 photos by David Bacon from the Alameda County Food Bank’s 2010 hunger study are being displayed at Oakland City Hall.

Baltimore native Katie Baum has brought the snowball across the country and given it a very East Bay spin with her company, Skylite Snowballs. “For me, it’s what you do in the summer,” Baum said. “It’s what you crave.”