Get array of text values using selector instead of iterating?

I have some HTML like:

<ul id='foo'>
    <span><a>hello 1</a></span>
    <span><a>hello 2</a></span>
    <span><a>hello 3</a></span>
</ul>

I want to get an array of all the text values of the elements like:

var texts = [ 'hello 1', 'hello 2', 'hello 3' ];

I'm trying to iterate over each one, is there some way in jQuery to just grab all of them using a selector?