Costco Wholesale's drug-free tilapia, A&S Fine Foods, Total Wine

Seafood Salad, top, and Roasted Red Peppers are two of the high-quality specialties prepared by A&S Fine Foods in Wyckoff. I paid $15 for an Amazon Local voucher that entitled me to purchase $30 worth of food at the Italian-American pork store, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A seemingly remarkable farmed fish stars this month in Costco Wholesale's lifestyle magazine for members.

A special section on Costco's private label, Kirkland Signature, describes tilapia fillets that may forever change my opinion of this common fish:

"Kirkland Signature Tilapia is raised by Regal Springs in pristine lakes ... in Mexico and Indonesia without chemicals, growth hormones or antibiotics," the September issue of The Costco Connection says.

I've been careful to buy wild-caught fish at Costco and other stores to avoid just those harmful additives, which are commonly found in tilapia and other farmed fish.

But on Thursday, when I went looking for this tilapia at my Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, I couldn't find any.

Tilapia also is known as St. Peter's Fish, and I first encountered the wild variety in the late 1970s at a kibbutz restaurant on the Sea of Galilee in Isreal.

Elusive shrimp

Another item I saw in the magazine, Kirkland Signature Cilantro Lime Shrimp, wasn't available when my wife went to Costco on Tuesday.

The magazine said the shrimp used are "free of chemicals and antibiotic residues," and Costco makes sure they meet "our microbial, chemical and quality standards."

Instead of Cilantro Lime Shrimp, my wife came home with Kirkland Signature Shrimp Salad, which has a dressing made from cultured cream, milk, egg yolks, sugar, corn starch and other ingredients.

I returned that salad for a refund on Thursday.

Foods carrying the Kirkland Signature label usually, but not always, are of high quality.

This what Kirkland Signature Shrimp Salad looks like in the container.

Ingredients in the Kirkland Signature Shrimp Salad include guar gum, carageenan, calcium sulfate and other preservatives.

Kirkland Signature Shrimp Salad is $9.99 a pound.

A&S Fine Foods

The A&S Fine Foods in a small shopping center on Cedar Hill Avenue in Wyckoff is one of 26 stores in the Northeast that were started by Italian immigrant Anthony Scicchitano.

Scicchitano sold the Wyckoff store to the present owners.

I loved the fresh garlic, celery and red onion that gave crunch to the wonderful Seafood Salad, and the fresh herbs in the lovely Roasted Red Peppers I bought there.

Using an Amazon Local voucher meant I paid half-price for the food I purchased, including organic dried pasta from bronze dies and store-made marinara.

Would I pay full price? That's a good question.

A&S Fine Foods, 525 Cedar Hill Ave., Wyckoff; 1-201-447-0800. Open 7 days.

The Seafood Salad I purchased at A&S Fine Foods on Labor Day was made with tender small shrimp, squid and baby octopus, and had plenty of crunch from celery and red onions ($16.99 a pound).

I used my $15 Amazon Local voucher to purchase a 1.1-pound box of imported Organic Fusilli made from farro, a type of hulled wheat ($6.49); a 32-ounce container of Marinara Sauce prepared in the store ($7.99), a half-pound of Seafood Salad and a half-pound of Roasted Red Peppers. My total was $31.72, so I paid $16.72 for the food.

Total Wine & More

Total Wine & More in River Edge offers a discount of 10% on six bottles with prices that end in "9."

Late last month, I bought six bottles of red wine, including cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, merlot and shiraz for $4.99 to $6.99 a bottle.

The total for six bottles with the so-called Mix 6 Discount was $31.44, plus tax, or about $5.20 per bottle.

Today, a Total Wine newspaper flier included a coupon for 15% off six bottles of wine with prices that end in "9." 

The coupon is good until Oct. 4.

Whole Foods Market in Paramus also offers a 10% discount on six bottle of wine.

Total Wine & More, 135 Kinderkamack Road, River Edge; 1-201-968-1777.

Costco Wholesale celebrates organic food with instant rebates

Bare Fruit Organic Fuji Apple Chips are one of the organic foods that are reduced through Feb. 1 at Costco Wholesale.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss instant rebates on organic food at Costco Wholesale, and ShopRite's Can Can Sale, where the savings are few and far between.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Costco Wholesale is following a lifestyle magazine article on four organic suppliers with discounts in its warehouse stores.

On Tuesday, an employee handed me a flier listing savings on organic products as I entered the Hackensack warehouse store.

They included $2.20 off Sambazon Organic Acai Superfood Juice, $2.50 off Pasta Prima Organic Spinach & Cheese Ravioli and $3 off Mayorga Organic Cafe Cubano Whole Bean Coffee.

Inside the store, I found two large displays of organic food.

See:

The Costco Connection's article on organics

A display at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack included Kirkland Signature Organic Salsa and Chicken Stock.

I bought Paesana Organic Tomato & Basil pasta sauce.

The organic pasta sauce, which has no added sugar, will go perfectly with Organic Whole Wheat Shells from Whole Foods Market ($1.49).

The label of this Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil from Costco says it can be used for cooking, in smoothies and as a skin and hair moisturizer.

At the ShopRite in Paramus, farmed-raised tilapia fillets from China were reduced further for the Can Can Sale, but given the country's poor food-safety record, I would never buy them.

Few deals at Can Can Sale

True to its name, the biggest savings at ShopRite's Can Can Sale are on canned goods.

At the ShopRite in Paramus this morning, I found only a few bargains on other items:

Organic whole wheat pasta (89 cents to $1.25 a pound), Adirondack Seltzer in 12-ounce cans (12 for $2.50), Clementines from Morocco (5 pounds for $4.99), Olivio Light Spread ($2.50) and Alberto VO5 Shampoo ($1.99 for a 26.5-ounce pump bottle).

During the Can Can Sale, Luigi Vitelli Organic Whole Wheat Pasta from Italy is being sold for 89 cents, $1.19 and $1.25 a pound, depending on the shape, above and below.

At the register, two packages of organic whole wheat linguine and two of spaghetti rang up at $1.25 each. When I asked an employee to check the signs on the shelf, I was charged 89 cents for one package of linguine and given the second one for free.

ShopRite's shelves are filled with a lot of grossly overpriced pasta, above and below.

The larger pump bottles of Alberto VO5 Shampoo are a better buy than the smaller size.

Consumer Reports: Buy only antibiotic-free chicken

The February 2014 issue of Consumer Reports concludes "that most raw chicken breasts are contaminated with bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

An investigation by Consumer Reports magazine led to a startling conclusion:

"Ninety-seven percent of the [chicken] breasts we tested harbored bacteria that could make you sick."

"Consumer Reports' recent analysis of more than 300 raw chicken breasts purchased at stores across the U.S. found potentially harmful bacteria lurking in almost all of the chicken, including organic brands."

Chicken can kill

The magazine's February 2014 issue reports "more deaths were attributed to poultry than to any other commodity," according to an analysis of outbreaks from 1998 through 2008 by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A total of 48 million people fall sick each year from eating tainted food.

Go drug free

"Still, there are good reasons for selecting chicken raised without the use of antibiotics," the magazine advises, adding:

"Buying those products supports farmers who keep their chickens off unnecessary drugs, and that's good for your health and preserves the effectiveness of antibiotics.

"'Chickens without antibiotic resistance to salmonella and other dangerous pathogens can't pass antibiotic-resistant bugs onto you,' says Dr. Robert Lawrence, a professor at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."

The Costco Connection cover story on "making food safer from farm to table" includes an appetizing photo of cooked poultry, produce and wine.

Costco weighs in

The Costco Connection magazine takes a starkly different approach to its report on food safety.

In a cover story in the January 2014 issue, Editor Tim Talevich asks whether government regulators are "making progress in the effort to make food safer?"

To answer this question, the editor met with officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

He also asked Craig Wilson, who oversees "Costco's food safety and quality-assurance program, to explain how food safety is promoted within Costco,  from fresh meats prepared in warehouse meat departments to packaged foods that come from suppliers."

Costco poultry

The magazine doesn't discuss Costco Wholesale food products that are raised on animal antibiotics, growth hormones or both.

The vast majority of meat and poultry sold at my Costco Wholesale contain harmful animal antibiotics, and labels on farmed fish are silent on whether their feed contains antibiotics or preservatives.

That includes the wildly popular Kirkland Signature whole rotisserie chickens.

At the Hackenack Costco, I've seen two antibiotic-free poultry brands, Coleman Organic and Empire Kosher.  The store also carries organic ground beef.

The ShopRite and Stop & Shop supermarket chains also offer their own brands of antibiotic-free chicken, and I've seen Coleman Organic chicken parts in several North Jersey ShopRites.

Whole Foods Market pledges all of its farmed seafood is raised without antibiotics and preservatives.

Footnote

Consumer Reports could have done a better job of communicating that all chicken, including more expensive organic and antibiotic-free brands, can be contaminated with bacteria.

A heading in the index, repeated in a prominent headline on Page 30 of the February 2014 issue reads:

"The high cost of cheap chicken"

As consumers know, organic and antibiotic-free chicken are more expensive than such low-cost, low-quality brands as Perdue, Amick Farms and Tyson.

Also, chicken breasts aren't the only parts that harbor harmful bacteria.

The Consumer Reports article includes a photo and story about Richard Schiller, 51, of San Jose, Calif., who was sickened by a salmonella strain found in the Foster Farms chicken thighs he ate.