Imagery from ’70s issues of Seed, the UK’s pioneering Journal of Organic Living which connected healthy eating with the ecology and counterculture movements of the ’70s 🥦 🥕🧝♀️
Craig Sams, along with his brother Gregory (creator of the original VegeBurger) and father Ken, started Seed in 1971. It was part of a whole constellation of pioneering organic food businesses that each fed each other.
First there was Seed macrobiotic restaurant, which had John Lennon and Yoko Ono as regulars and was allegedly where Marc Bolan met Mickey Finn to form T. Rex. Then Ceres Grain Shop opened, offering restaurant patrons brown rice, beans, miso, tahini and seaweed to cook at home. This led naturally to Harmony Foods, a wholesale business selling bulk ingredients to natural foods stores (much like Erewhon in Boston at the time, before private equity and influencers). Then Ceres Bakery launched, turning the organic grain they sourced into wholegrain breads. Seed magazine advertised all these businesses prominently.
In the late ’70s, Craig and Gregory launched the Whole Earth Foods brand for supermarket shelves, and later commissioned pop-psychedelic artist Larry Smart (featured here not long ago) to design the branding.
