The Top 11 Health Food Stores in the United States

Recently, we highlighted the best 35 Supermarkets in America for 2016. In an effort to provide readers with the ability to find the healthiest food, we’ve decided to create a new subset of this list. Thus, we present to you The Top 11 Health Food Stores in the United States.

While all favorites lists are subjective, we can tell you that all 11 stores featured on this list provide some of the healthiest edibles (and drinkables) out there. Offering things like sustainable wild-caught fish from top companies, every variety of organic salad green you could ever want, a slew of health-promoting dark chocolates, and more, a health food store is defined as any store that offers nutritionally sound, environmentally conscious products and does its best to reduce humankind's footprint. If you’ve ever been to a supermarket that just feels hip (perhaps one that doesn’t provide plastic bags but does offer freshly made juices), you’ve probably been to a health food store as defined by us.

You’ll certainly recognize some of the large, national chains on this list, but many of the healthiest stores in our country are smaller chains with just a handful of locations. We’ve compiled this list using various other lists on the internet as well as information from sources like the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association, filtering the information for what we believe to be the best of the best based on sustainable practices, customer and community integration and education, allergy-related mindfulness, and, of course, availability of the healthiest types of food. Say goodbye to GMOs and hello to health.