Wholefood shops in Bristol

Bristol is blessed with quite a number of wholefood shops, box schemes and health stores. Several areas of the city have what boringly gets dubbed a 'bohemian' and vegans and veggies are commonplace. There's not much of a raw food presence thus far so do crawl out of the woodwork and comment on my blog if you're a raw food devotee and a Bristolian.

Anyways, here's a quick tour through some of fave wholefood shop is Brizzle, with a mention of how good they are for those living a raw food lifestyle.

One historically important shop is Wild Oats, just off Blackboy Hill on Whiteladies road. It opened back in the 70s as a macrobiotic eatery before becoming a major emporium for health foods. They have a self-serve area with loose grains, beans, nuts, etc. and an extrensive supplements (if you do supplements) and herbal remedies section. It's a great place to pick up a range of cold pressed oils, eco-firendly washing detergents, etc. They also sell a few raw food bars.

One the the best bits of Brizzle is the lively Gloucester Road, with it's wide range of small businesses, from the traditional to the new and trendy. It's a reminder of what high streets used to look like before bland uniformity took over and the clone town came to dominate our lives.
My favourite's probably Scoopaway, which, as the name suggests, allows you to scoop up a rnage of loose foods - lentils, beans, linseed, sunflower, herbs, species, you name it. Scoopaway tends to be a bit elbow crowded on Saturdays such is it's popularity.

Nearby is La Ruca, a wholefood shop owned by a Chilean family, which is always worth a look around. Another shop worth a look, that tends to have a few things Scoopaways doesn't like a modest slection of organic fruit and veg, is Harvest, which is part of the Essential worker's co-operative. They even sell raw cacao nibs, but only in fairly small packets making it a little pricey.