Market offers all-natural options

Located in historic downtown Hattiesburg is one of the Hub City's best-kept secrets—New Yokel Market.

Since opening in December 2005, New Yokel has supplied the community "goods for the good life,"  an array of completely natural, whole and mostly organic foods and products. In addition to being Hattiesburg's only all-natural grocery store, New Yokel also has a café, which offers a salad bar, homemade soups, organic fruit smoothies, organic vegetable juices and fair-trade organic espresso.

Owner and Mississippi native Chris Cagle opened the business in hopes that he could bring his natural way of living to Hattiesburg. Chris said there was luckily a small, but wonderful contingent of people with similar feelings.

"The folks that come here are honestly some of the best folks in this town," Chris Cagle said. "It's been a great way to meet people and learn about where I live."

Southern Miss graduate Matthew Brumfield is a regular customer of New Yokel.  Brumfield said he credits his loyalty to the business to the comfortable atmosphere, top-notch customer service and large variety of goods available.

"Eating wholesome food is important to my family's health," Brumfield said. "My kids are on a strictly natural foods diet. Most of what they eat comes from here."

In the market, one can find fresh, local and organic fruits and vegetables, naturally raised meat and sustainably harvested fish, freshly roasted fair-trade certified coffee, more than 50 organic herbs, spices and seasonings and foods from India, Japan, Thailand and the Mediterranean.

There are also several natural soaps, lotions, shampoos and cosmetics, recycled paper products, biodegradable cleaners and natural medicines available.

According to Chris Cagle, our society has consumed more calories over the past 50 years, but fewer nutrients.

"Food is the most basic decision we make every day with our money. We so often, as a culture, put it at the bottom of the list, preferring to spend it on expensive gadgetry instead of wholesome food," Chris Cagle said. "We constantly buy cheap junk food, produced more by chemicals and machines than by humans and soil biology, and we suffer greatly because of it."

A statement featured on New Yokel's website says America uses about 82,000 chemicals in its products, and less than 25% of them have been tested for toxicity.

Manager of New Yokel, Anna Cagle, is passionate about natural products. She said it is important for people not to be fooled by the "all natural" labels put on products in chain grocery retailers.

"Just because a jar of peanut butter in the grocery store says ‘all natural' on it doesn't mean it is so," Anna Cagle said. "Usually it has not been officially approved. It is more important to read the ingredients on the back than anything else."

Chris Cagle said eating good food makes people feel better, provides safer jobs and protects the natural systems all human life depends on.

New Yokel Market is open Monday through Wednesday and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. and on Thursday from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m.