Whole Foods announced a host of new changes to their stores recently, and we're quite happy with them. Keep your eye out for humanely raised insects, including bumblebees raised without cages or crates (they are free to fly away, but choose not to), as well as grasshoppers who are given their own Netflix accounts instead of being forced to share queues. Now that's looking out for the best interest of the little 'hopper! More

Ah, hot dogs. Meat tubes bursting with stars-and-stripes patriotism and, when they're good, a poppy snap with salty-garlicky-beefy juiciness. Even if you're not a "hot dog person" they just taste better on the Fourth. We went grocery shopping for the most nationally-available brands of all-beef franks, both skinless and with natural casing. Check out the results. More

[Flickr: Comp4Me] Here are the results to last week's poll: What's Your Favorite Grocery Store? » Trader Joe's 33% Wegmans 23% Whole Foods 18% Publix 8% Central Market 8% Safeway 5% Fairway 4% Giant 2 % Fred Meyer 2% Stew Leonard's 2% It was a controversial topic but Trader Joe (or Jose, Ming, Giotto, Johann, or Joe-San, depending on the product) wins it! Honorable mentions go out to all the markets we couldn't squeeze into the poll, including: New Seasons, Copps, C-Town, Piggly Wiggly, Market Basket, Hannaford, Nugget, Cub Foods, Harris Teeter, H-Mart, Byerly's, Dierbergs, Buehler's, and Henry's.... More

Trader Joe's came out on top in our olive oil tasting. [Photograph: Robyn Lee] When the Food section of The San Francisco Chronicle took a look back at the year's blind tastings, they noticed quite a bit of love for grocery store generic brands. "Panelists are choosing generic brands from Safeway, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods almost as often as name brands...In fact, in the 44 tastings from 2009, more than one-third of the winners were grocery store brands." So long to the stigma against cheaper, less prettily-packaged goods from the in-house brand? The Chronicle's tasters were fans of baked goods from Trader Joe's and condiments from Safeway (especially the cocktail sauce and bread and butter pickle chips). Sifting... More

There's no shame in using a boxed stuffing mix on Thanksgiving. See which brands did the best in our taste test. More

Does good-quality, cheapish olive oil exist? We tried nine grocery store-bought olive oils—nothing over $20 per liter, with most bottles hugging the $10 price point. They ranged from buttery and mellow to peppery and cough-inspiring. Check out the results. More

Ever since Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece last week stating that national health care is not a right for all Americans, some liberal groups are threatening to boycott the grocery chain. The company issued an apology to customers, saying Mackey’s "intent was to express his personal opinions, not those of Whole Food Market."... More

According to the Bellevue Reporter, Whole Foods requires each staff butcher to complete a 1,920-hour training process, which lasts about two years. They start with clean-up duties, then the counter, then cutting duties, which starts with poultry, then pork, and finally beef. Talk about a meat doctorate. [via Girlhacker]... More