Food Research
The food and drink a strength athlete actually buys in southeastern Wisconsin — and the supply chain behind it, traced back to what the animals were fed and what the plants were sprayed with.
Most food writing is either a brand telling you its product is clean or a wellness account telling you it is poison. This library does neither. It reads the food a lifter around Milwaukee actually puts in the cart — at Pick ’n Save, Metro Market, Trader Joe’s, Woodman’s, Costco, Aldi, Kwik Trip, and the rest — and traces each item backwards: to the processor, the farm or growing region, and the inputs upstream. What was the animal fed and dosed with. What was sprayed on the plant, and what residue monitoring actually detected versus what is merely permitted. Where the trace goes dark — Trader Joe’s discloses no suppliers — that is written down as a finding, not papered over with a guess.
Two stores anchor the spectrum. Kwik Trip mills, bakes, and bottles most of what it sells and processes its own milk in La Crosse — the shortest verifiable chain on the list. Trader Joe’s is almost entirely private label and names no one — the chain that ends at the shelf. Everything else sits in between.
Foundations
-
Retail map
Who actually owns Pick ’n Save, Metro Market, Trader Joe’s, Kwik Trip, and the rest — traced to SEC filings and the private-label decoder.
-
Traceability protocol
How to read an
EST./P-number, a PLU, and a lot code off a package and resolve it to a named plant and region. -
Label decoder
USDA Organic, “Natural,” Non-GMO Project, grassfed, Certified Humane, NSF Certified for Sport, Prop 65 — what each audits and what it does not.
-
Contaminants
Pesticide residues, heavy metals, PFAS, glyphosate, microplastics, nitrites, mycotoxins — dose, exposure, and where the headline outruns the data.
The basket
Romaine & leafy greens in progress
Salinas/Yuma seasonality, the E. coli outbreak history, and what PDP detects on lettuce.
Beef in progress
Feedlot, implants, ionophores, beta-agonists, and the cull-dairy-cattle share of ground beef.
Chicken in progress
Broiler integrators, feed, antibiotic classes, and why hormones are not the issue.
Pork in progress
Ractopamine, the hog belt, and processor consolidation.
Eggs in progress
Cage-free vs. pasture-raised vs. nothing, and the avian-influenza price shocks.
Dairy in progress
Milk, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, RTD shakes, rbST, and the Kwik Trip short-chain case study.
Seafood in progress
Canned tuna and mercury, farmed vs. wild salmon, and species mislabeling.
Other produce & carb staples in progress
Berries and the Dirty Dozen fight; rice and arsenic; oats and glyphosate.
Supplements
Protein powder in progress
The Wisconsin whey chain, heavy metals in third-party testing, and amino spiking.
Creatine in progress
Creapure vs. commodity, contaminants, and the unusually strong efficacy literature.
Pre-workout & stimulants in progress
Undeclared stimulants, the Cohen research, and FDA’s tainted-products list.
Micronutrients, fish oil, bars & RTDs in progress
Vitamin D and magnesium, fish-oil rancidity, and the protein-bar co-packer map.
Synthesis
Cost per gram of protein in progress
Every protein source ranked by dollars per gram of protein, per store, date-stamped.
Buying guide in progress
The practical tiered basket, store by store — the one page that names brands, and says so.
How this was built
-
Methodology
The scope, the eight-section dossier structure, the supply-chain trace, and the citation rules every page here follows.
-
Bibliography
Every source cited across the site, grouped by topic, labeled primary / industry / advocacy.