I’ve written a lot of blogs in the past few years. Some have been provocative, others have been daring, a few like the one about Lilly my beloved Scottish Deerhound have been described as sensitive. One or two have even been viewed by some of my readers as romantic.  But the one you are about to read will never be described in any of those ways.

There’s nothing sexy, romantic, daring or provocative about scrip. I mean, the whole thing sounds like something from a ’40s wartime rationing program.

And yet it allows Hiller’s to provide the very lifeblood of more than 300 Detroit-area groups, schools and organizations, a program that lets you raise money for what’s done anyway: grocery shopping.

And I think of the program often. I really do. You see, I believe in this notion that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive.  I want to be a successful grocer, sure, but I also believe, with the very marrow of my being, that I am not truly successful, not worth a lick of salt, if I am not also helping, if I’m not contributing.

To whom much is given, much is required and while I’m not the world’s most religious guy, I truly believe that.

And I’ve been given. This morning, as every morning, before dawn’s forgiving break, I walked my cherished dogs. I have two: Lilly, my often storied Deerhound and Al, my Doberman. We rambled and rested and rambled and rested, under ice covered trees with owls hooting and deer staring with wary eyes ready to break and run for any or maybe no good reason. Those are the times of my life that belong to me alone and during which my thoughts are best fused with the yin and yang of my daily existence.. Sometimes I mull over my business and how it’s doing. But recently my thoughts have been more focused on how I want to help others and empower them to do the same..

And… I thought of our scrip program. I’m proud of it. It’s what Hiller’s is about. For 17 years we have partnered with hundreds of organizations to raise money just by their supporters doing their weekly grocery shopping. It works like this: schools, religious organizations and groups like ALS of Michigan and Make-A-Wish Foundation, give their participants Hiller’s scrip cards. Money is put on the cards using cash, credit cards or checks, and the customer uses the card, much as one would use a gift card, to pay for purchases.

And here’s the thing: after every activation and reload, from $5 to $1,000, the organization gets a monthly Hiller’s check for 5 percent of that amount. Say you spend $100 at one of our seven stores. The group you represent automatically gets $5. Multiply that by scores of shoppers weekly, and you’re talking serious fundraising. In 2009, Hiller’s charitable partners raised themselves more than $250,000 .

With school budgets slashed to zilch and non-profits reeling, I thought about how our scrip program is needed now more than ever. Take Dee Dworman, a school volunteer who started the program at West Bloomfield’s Pleasant Lake Elementary School nearly a decade ago. Scrip sales are close to $8,000 monthly, paying for things like the school’s literacy library, back-to-school barbecues and family fun nights. “We’ve been able to have so many things at our school that we wouldn’t be able to have without this program,” Dworman said. “That five percent is huge, and this is a year-round program so we’re making money even in the summer, when you still have to shop. It is free, easy and painless fundraising. We’re not selling anything.”

She particularly likes that in 2006 we switched from paper scrip to more-durable, bookkeeping-friendly plastic. Apparently other folk do too, since the program has really taken off. For the last two years, Katherine Murphy has been the coordinator at Our Lady of Victory school in Northville, which uses scrip to, among other things, fund its science program. Some of the revenue even goes toward tuition. ”Oh, gosh. It’s so important,” she said of the program. “It’s comes out to a huge percentage of help for our school.”

I guess its true…this blog about  scrip isn’t sexy, but it is damn satisfying to know that we are seeking to do good and to do well  at the same time.

For more information or to sign up for the Hiller’s Scrip Program, contact Cindy Perez at (248) 355-2122 or  cindy.perez@hillers.com.

Aside from an occasional bout of arthritis in my lower back, I’m a pretty healthy guy.

But a few weeks ago, I just felt out of sorts. Nothing specific…but a little off my feed, as dairy farmers would say about their cows.  My lifelong mantra has been that we are all responsible for our own salvation so I bought one of those 25-buck blood pressure meters from the drug store and decided to start there. Sure enough my numbers were higher than they should have been, hovering around 145 over 90. (Normal is 120 over 80.)

A call to my best friend and doctor, Michel, confirmed my conclusions and included some recommendations from him.  He put me on some medicine, but he also told me to get more exercise and to cut my sodium.

I already exercise about an hour per day so my prime target became salt.

BUT…. other than an occasional shake on popcorn and my egg-white omelets, I couldn’t recall adding salt to anything in years

I’ve always read food labels because keeping the fat out has been my longtime focus. Now that I’ve moved down a few lines on the nutrition labels, I’m astonished at how much sodium is in just about everything.

Now I know that 2,400 milligrams of sodium daily – the amount in one teaspoon of salt – is the recommended maximum for adults. Someone like me with high blood pressure should eat half that amount.

But I’ve also learned that the average American consumes twice the max! And most is attributable to processed and preserved foods – that is, the stuff in the middle aisles and the deli sections of grocery stores.

Once I recognized how widespread high blood pressure is in our culture, and how many millions of people suffer strokes or heart attacks or die too young because of it, it came to me like an epiphany that I needed to do something.

I called my Head Buyer Larry in the middle of the night – I woke him up – and declared: “We are on a mission! We must seek out sodium-free and low-sodium items in every category and visibly mark them. We must make it easy for people who have high blood pressure, or love someone who does, to cut out the salt.”

We had already done the same for gluten-free items. In fact, we offer more gluten-free products than any other grocery in the Midwest and they’re a breeze to find because of their unique tags.

I put every one of my buyers on a mission to find no- or low-sodium products and, to my amazement, we’ve found hundreds of them ! We’ve got whole lines of soups. We found things in every single category, including lunch meats, and all these hundreds of new products are being marked so shoppers can spot them.

Hiller’s is becoming a sea of low-sodium tags

Sure, I’ve read that some manufacturers are discretely cutting the sodium in their processed foods, like soup, and not telling anyone. They worry people won’t buy low-sodium things because they aren’t jazzed up by all the salt.

I say Horse Pucky ! Food manufacturers have oversalted us for decades. If your life depends on it, you’ll get accustomed to the taste of less salt

I’ve changed my diet and cut the salt.  It’s a gift to myself and those I love. And stocking all these new products – almost a thousand of them – is my gift to you or someone you love who should be cutting salt, too.

Look for the little tags with the slash mark through the salt shakers. All of our lives may depend on it.