Organic Online Shopping: Thrive and Pete’s Paleo

I love to shop from the couch.  I thought I would share two of my new favorite hangouts.

Thrive:

I forgot how I found Thrive.  My best guess is a Podcast by Chris Kesser.  

Thrive is new and seems to be developing into an online version of a membership discount club.  It features organic and natural items from food to household cleaners.  You can browse by specific item type (shampoo), or by interest category (paleo, vegan, raw, gluten free, healthy moms).

Today, my favorite – try something new purchase – was exo bars.  The protein in these bars comes from crickets.  The company was presented on the show Shark Tank.

You can enter a free trial period and then decide.  I was actually going to cancel before the trial ended.  However, when I was shopping today, I noticed a few items where priced much lower than at my local shop.  Ex: Dark chocolate covered almonds were $4 less on Thrive.  They seem to be adding new products as they develop.

There are two natural shops near me.  One is larger and sells a wider variety of products, but some products require discretion and research before going in the cart.  They cater to a wider clientele and have a great selection but you cannot go into the store and blindly throw things in your cart.  The second is smaller and reviews ingredient lists and GMO status more closely.  They make adjustments to their inventory as they find better and cleaner sources and their employees will recommend items because they know what is in it.  “I would recommend brand A because brand B has ‘this’ in it and we may stop carrying it.”

Thrive Market is more like the former.  That is fine by me, I just know to read the label to make sure it is what I am looking for.    It is a great find for me, and I plan on continuing with Thrive.

Pete’s Paleo:

I found Pete’s Paleo from a webcast about gut health.  One thing that has been hard with all of this Lyme/Candida diet stuff has been finding convenience foods.  Fatigue and work conspire to derail healthy eating.  If you like to punish yourself, go to your local grocery store and look for a frozen meal that has no gluten, no dairy and is low carb.  If you are really a glutton, limit fish to wild caught, beef to grass fed, and chicken to free range.  Even at my organic haunts, a near impossible task.

Pete’s Paleo is a place that I can order some prepared meals with all the flavor and no gluten, added sweetners or dairy.  The portion sizes are good.  I have to be fairly hungry to finish a full one.  They also sell bone broth as samples for one of their programs.  I usually order 1-2 meals a day/week and then stick them in my freezer and use them on those days when I just do not feel like cooking. So they last a lot longer than a week.  They taste good and are of much better quality than any frozen food entrees that I have had before.

Downsides:  expensive (but for a reason-high quality sources); shipping from California is not only expensive but seems incredibly wasteful (edit: but I bet my previous easy meals were not local either); you can order just the sides, but I am not sure if there are vegan options-but I cannot imagine vegans are a target market for a paleo site

Neutral: higher fat meat cuts- I am used to seeking out and eating lean proteins and many entrees feature less than lean meats.

Overall, I am happy to have found a site that I can order convenient meals from and not have to worry about gluten, dairy and sugar.

 Do you have any favorite shops?  Have you tried these?