Twelve vendors support the Marketplace at Buena Vista Avenue and Park Street. When you walk in, you will see locally owned, independent businesses with sustainable, handmade, natural and organic, seasonal, goodies that make your mouth water. The theme uniting everyone in the building is that they are carefully selected because of the quality of their offerings. Many have expressed delight over the good eats that each merchant in the Marketplace carries.

Everything tastes better with real, untainted food. If you like fried chicken, get the real chicken without the toxins and fix it with your favorite recipe. The ideas are to enjoy good food — great tasting food — and live healthily to share the wonderful energy from food with friends and family. Real food gives us our energy; our life originates from real food.

Alameda Natural Grocery's owner Donna Layburn's lifestyle of enjoying healthy food gives everyone the opportunity to join her in this quest because of the natural and organic food she sells at her store. Donna wanted to be healthy with natural foods and supplements. She also carries beauty products.

Alameda Natural Grocery cares enough to make sure that Alameda gets good, wholesome, organic and natural tasty food. They also give monthly, informative classes about food and health-related topics at The Beanery. On the first Friday of every month, at 7 p.m., you can attend a free seminar about an issue regarding food for health.

Many of the vendors in the Marketplace use organic, natural, local sources and Bay Area foods. Did you know that plants can tell what is missing in our environment? And, when they are grown in an environment missing something, the plants put that missing element back into themselves. So if you pick a plum from a tree within the Bay Area, that plum will provide all of the missing things you need in your environment.

That is one of the reasons it is so important to eat the fruit and vegetables from your surroundings. By eating fruits and vegetables from your area, it will "rev" up your body and reduce your carbon footprint due to less transportation. You can know better where the food came from, it supports people in our community and state, and stays fresher and more nutritious.

"We are the biggest source of natural foods in Alameda," said Tully Velte, Marketing Coordinator of The Alameda Natural Grocery, who believes in good, natural food. "We are really the first. It's a lifestyle for us. We believe in a healthy community and planet. We have strict buying guidelines to help assure our customers that there will not be anything questionable on our shelves. We also put an emphasis on providing goods from local, Bay Area producers, and farm-direct, seasonal produce." Tully continued. "Our produce is all organic with the exception of one or two products, and a lot of it is farmdirect, too."

Alameda Natural Grocery has just recently put bee hives on their roof to enhance the growing in Alameda, and as soon as the bees make enough honey, the store will be selling it. For those of you who have allergies and believe that local honey helps you, the honey will be here soon.

"Bees and their pollinating efforts are responsible for 1 in 3 foods we eat. Alameda Natural Grocery takes issue when a third of our food disappears because of dying bees. There is a mysterious and global phenomenon, Colony Collapse Disorder, in which bees vanish from their hives, never to return. An estimated 5 million colonies, containing 20,000 to 40,000 bees each have disappeared in the U.S. alone, and many, many more across the planet. There are a number of factors which could be contributing, but monoculture farming and pesticides rank among the most problematic. (Monoculture farming is when industrial farmers grow the same crop in massive quantities.) We have four hives on our roof, with a healthy, growing population of bees pollinating the surrounding neighborhood and producing honey," said Randy Owczarzak, manager of the Alameda Natural Grocery.

Alameda Natural Grocery's lecture series runs on the first Friday of the month at 7 p.m. in The Beanery. Friday, Aug. 2, Kristin Selby-Gonzalez, Director of Autism Education for Enzymedica will speak on "Understanding the Importance of Diet and Digestion for Autism Spectrum Disorder."

"We feel good about what we offer to the community of Alameda. We believe in good health, the strengthening of our community through good food and the culture of sustainability, and we aim to be a resource for making ourselves and our planet healthier. We offer comprehensive specialty products," said Tully. In April of 2012 Alameda Marketplace won the Alameda Municipal Power Green Powerstar Award for all-around efforts to support energy efficiency, energy savings, greener power use, as well as the usage of new, innovative, energy saving strategies.

"We would also like to thank our Alameda patrons that support us at Alameda Natural Grocery. We believe in your health, and obviously you believe in it, too. Feel free to call us if you need an item; we may be able to get it for you," said Donna.

Call 865-1500, or shop at 1650 Park St. Visit their website at www.alamedanaturalgrocery.com.