communityspotlight
Lynchburg Store
Brings Local “Real Food”
to More People
by Karen Adams
Not long ago, Mike Cundiff
Lynchburg Real Foods puts vision into action
was a yoga instructor and
sociology instructor with
by offering healthful food from local producers,
a vision: to bring healthy
and by making it available to everyone.
lifestyles to more people,
especially those who may
To define “real food,” he refers to food writer Michael Pollan’s description
not know where to begin.
that what we eat should be something our grandparents would recognize: “If you
pick up an item and it has more than five ingredients listed, don’t buy it. It’s not
Still a yoga and sociology
‘real food.’”
teacher, he is now also the
Cundiff, who teaches yoga at his Mind Body Studio, says Lynchburg Real
founder of Lynchburg Real
Foods is just another outgrowth of a lifestyle based on cooperation, mindfulness,
sustainability, and health. In 2002, he opened his studio, which offers all types of
Foods, a natural foods store
therapeutic and relaxation work, such as tai chi, massage therapy, belly dance, and
and buying club in the heart
Pilates, as well as yoga.
of the city. It grew out of
That same year, he started a whole-foods buying club via Frankferd Farms of
Pennsylvania. Through them, members placed weekly orders for natural foods and
the simple idea that if you
picked them up at the studio. But things have grown, and Lynchburg Real Foods
offer people “real food”
was born in 2008. Now shoppers can buy local food more easily when they come
from local, regional, and
to the new location on Rivermont Avenue, in an old fire station. As members, they
can still place their orders through Frankferd Farms,
sustainable sources, they
but they can also order other food directly from local
will embrace it.
growers and producers. Plus, when they come to pick
up their orders, they may decide to buy additional
“I’ve spent a lot of
local goods, brought there by the farmers themselves.
time studying the social,
According to Cundiff, the local offerings came
about by surprise. In 2007, while helping to organize
economic, and political
the first annual Greenspring Healthy Living Expo,
aspects of all this,” says
he came across one good local food provider after
Cundiff. “There is a ‘real
another: vegetable and fruit growers, meat producers,
dairy farmers and the like. But he was startled to learn that they had few outlets for
food’ scarcity, meaning
their goods. And not a lot of people knew about them.
most people are being fed
He was concerned. How could these farmers get their products into the local
by whatever the local ‘big
market, and how could shoppers find them? If a farm is 25 miles away, for exam-
ple, how many people can go there to buy those goods?
box’ providers sell. That’s
The sociologist in him wondered further: What about people with low in-
consistent, but it’s not
comes? How can they have access to these local foods if they have limited money
necessarily local or sus-
and transportation?
“These products have all been available for some time, but unless you take
tainable or even healthy.
a big day trip out to these farms – which you can, and it’s a great thing to do
And that’s the diet of the
– it’s hard to support these farmers,” he says. “Unless their goods are all in the
average American.”
same place.”
Southwestern Virginia
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