Soy milk and tofu are widely available at Safeway and Giant. The Atkins diet craze is dying down. Burger King touts a veggie burger.
All of which is exactly why the Takoma Park food co-op needed to start selling meat, said manager Bob Atwood.
Takoma Park residents Evelyne Adler, 33, and Carlos Fernandez, 34, shop for organic meat at the farmers market.
(Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
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Atwood said organic and natural foods are available at so many places now that people would rather do one-stop shopping at a store with a variety of products, some of which happen to be meat. The co-op competes with 14 Whole Foods Markets in the Washington region, one less than two miles away.
Last spring, 71 percent of co-op members voted against having "vegetarian" imbedded in the store's mission statement. Shortly afterward, whole-wheat breaded chicken patties arrived on store shelves. In a concession to the minority, the flesh is confined to two sections of the freezer, and signs warn that there is "all natural, organic meat in this area."
"It was more important for us to stay in business than us staying vegetarian," Atwood said. "They realized that if we had to do it, it would help us be stronger in the community."
Atwood said that after the vote, one woman chased him down a store aisle, yelling, "How could you?"
Even so, co-op membership has increased in the past year by 300 people, to 3,500 -- an all-time high.
At the Sunday farmers market, Forrest Pritchard of Smith Meadows Farms was shunned by locals when he first brought his grass-fed beef and free-range eggs three years ago. The Takoma Voice newspaper was flooded with angry letters to the editor. Some called him a terrorist.
Now, the shy, mannerly farmer from Berryville, Va., is a member of the market's board of directors. Two other vendors now sell sausage tarts and eggs . The letters to the editor have stopped.
Still, the meat market here is a bit different than elsewhere in the region. The Pritchard family says Takoma Park is the only place where they don't get questions like, "What's free-range? Does that mean you're giving it away?"
Instead, shopper Rolf Reichle had other concerns about the sirloin he ordered.
"I probably have to put some salt on it?" asked the 36-year-old NASA scientist. "I thaw it first, right?"
After nearly 14 years of plant food, Reichle started back with ground beef a few months ago. He said he was "graduating" to steaks.
Reichle explained that his vegetarian wife, pregnant with twins and plagued with health problems, was urged by her doctor to change her diet. Reichle didn't want to bother preparing meat dishes for her and tofu for himself.
