We have our totally redone new site up!  Go check out our new graphics, navigation, and site features at www.morfoods.com.  We also have individual product pages for our Organic Apple, Organic Apple Blueberry, Organic Apple Cherry, and Organic Apple Raspberry bars.  We also link to this blog and our twitter page a bit more prominently.  We’ve broken out the Stores list by state so it’s much easier to navigate, and will soon have a Contact Us form up so you don’t have to email through your program or online.

I’m personally very excited about this new design.  Not only does the site look more….friendly, but I have so much more flexibility!  A big “Thank You” goes out the Carole, who did the design (check out her other work at www.creativemediaweb.com) and Carol for developing content (www.palateworks.com – she’s also our nutritionist and part-time blogger).  And yes, we get the names mixed up all the time.

So check us out, and let us know what you think!  Oh, and the banners change on virtually every refresh, so look for that too!

Cheers,

Stephanie

A House bill (HR 1324) and a Senate bill (S 934) are gaining steam, while parents, educators and students are cooking up nutrition awareness around the country. Slow Food is organizing a National Day of Action Eat-in on September 7, petitions to get more money for school nutrition are circulating, and health-conscious students are taking over vending machines to stock them with healthier foods.

The “radical” idea is to make nutrition policy uniform for all schools, consistent throughout each school (instead of one standard for cafeteria food and another for vending machines), and not based on old nutrition science.

Curious about the current criteria (last updated in 1970s) for “competitive” foods – those offered in schools, but separate from the subsidized meal programs? CSPI’s eye-popping quiz illustrates the “nutritional value” of breath mints versus candy bars and other snack options.

Fresh fruit and 100% fruit snacks meet existing and proposed standards for snacks consumed in and after school, as long as the serving size (number of calories) isn’t too high. Other snacks need to meet fat, sugar and other nutrition criteria, but those criteria currently vary from state to state, county to county.

Eat healthy… Eat in!

PS: To read and ask Q&As about nutrition and healthy snacking, sign up for our newsletter at www.morfoods.com

The film makes a convincing argument for organic produce and purchasing only the meat of free-ranging animals fed their natural diets (e.g., grass instead of corn). You might even be motivated to grow some of your own organic produce – which isn’t a bad way to spend time in the summer (it’s outdoor exercise, at least).

If you’re not keen on hunting, butchering and cleaning meat for your table, here’s a great site with info on pasture-based farms:  The Eatwild Directory. Click on the U.S. map to locate sources of local, grass-fed meat, eggs, dairy, etc.

Don’t forget farmers markets as another great source of local and organic meat and produce.

Fire up the free-range BBQ!

www.bearfruitbar.com

We’ve added a new feature to our newsletter (sign up on our site, www.morfoods.com) called the Q & A section.  Ask your nutritional questions below in the comments, and your answers might show up in our next newsletter!  Don’t worry – we have a nutritionist in our team, so we’re not just googling here.  Check out some interesting nutrition bloopers she’s found…goes to show it’s up to the individual consumer to educate themselves on what is healthy for their family!

We’ve been slowly changing over our website to a new server, and it’s been an interesting process.  The domain transferred over, emails, transactions are running smoothly…I know things are going really well when Craig (one of the co-owners, my father) has time to complain about the new amount of spam he’s getting.  Definitely a good sign.

One of the reasons we switched is so that I can do live updates to the site, which is slightly terrifying for someone who hasn’t coded since…well, for a while.  CSS is a new and exciting adventure.

Thankfully, I’ve got help along the way.  So…wish us luck during this transition, mind the bumps, and as always feel free to comment on how we can make things better!

Cheers,

Stephanie

I have not been paying as much attention to the Farm Bill as I should have, considering it affects organic produce in the US.  When I finally caught up, I realized the bill addresses many of the issues I’ve been having over the years, mostly with the availability of organic raw materials.  Finding ingredients for our Bear Fruit Bars is a mixed blessing-it’s an incredibly simple product (concentrate and apples), but these ingredients are ridiculously hard to source.

On the plus side, if you’re looking for organic raw apples in the Northwest I’m probably your girl.

I remember in college doing a report on the differences between EU and US organic production.  What I found interesting, beyond the actual accreditation process, was that the EU subsidized farmers in their transition to organics, and helped provide a market for “transitional” produce (I’d recommend keeping an eye out for this in your grocery stores – it’s the produce that is grown during the three year transition process all conventional farmers have to go through when converting to organic.  Purchasing transitional in addition to organic helps the farmer survive the transition).  These steps helped boost production and encouraged farmers to convert their crops.

This blog is beginning to remind me of that report so I’ll quickly summarize.  I need organic ingredients, and now the government is supporting the creation of these raw ingredients.  Thank you, government.

For more information, please visit the USDA website.

This is our first company blog, and I’ll be experimenting a little with the content.  All the advice I’ve been given is to write about what you know – and I have to say my life is so filled with Mountain Organic Foods that I feel pretty comfortable writing about it.

As this is the first post, I’ll summarize a bit on the company:  Ken started in 2005 with a desire to bring fresh organic produce to the Northwest region.  This led to the discovery of a patent created by the USDA, which takes fresh fruit and turns it into a shelf-stable, convenient product.  Since Ken was already working in organics, it was a natural extension for him.  The concept grew, and became Bear Fruit Bars, although it was only a part-time endeavor for the original founder for many years.

Now run by Craig and his daughter (moi) full-time, Bear Fruit Bar is growing – starting in UNFI in March, attending the Expo West show in Anaheim in 2009 (booth 2913, stop by for free samples!), and starting this wonderful and insightful blog.

We’ll be covering industry information, providing special coupons, and entertaining you with the ramblings of a co-owner who occasionally stops to wonder at the world (mostly in between trying chocolates for our upcoming Apple Cherry Chocolate bars – there are definitely some perks to being in the R&D dept).

Cheers,

Stephanie

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