Posted on 05/17/2009 4:42:27 PM PDT by Shout Bits
While the world most people inhabit rarely adopts Hollywood and Berkley fads, the 'green' movement has indeed caught fire with people who actually work to eat. Bemused by Kabbalah, Scientology, earth auras, and the like, regular America seems interested in being 'green.' Naturally, wherever there is a fad, an enterprising company will step up to exploit it. In this case, the practice of exploiting the public's concerns is called 'green washing.' While most green washing is simply characterizing established practices as somehow environmentally friendly, the grocery chain Whole Foods has magically turned one of the least green practices into a core sacrament of the new religion.
Whole Foods pushes 'organic' products. While regular foods sold in the US have been conclusively proven to be safe through extensive testing, reporting, and regulation, Whole Foods was basically founded on the idea that organic foods were healthier and better tasting. Whole Foods eschewed the 'corporate' food industry in favor of a more commune like diet. Whole Foods customers responded to slogans like 'organic,' 'macro-biotic,' 'unprocessed,' and 'preservative free.' Whole Foods sold yoga magazines instead of gossip rags; they and their customers were enlightened. Many Americans bought into a healthier, purer lifestyle, and Whole Foods fueled their spiritual mission.
Of course Whole Food's health claims were at best exaggerated. Regular foods are every bit as healthy as organic. Dreaded pesticides, in the quantities found on grocery foods, are perfectly safe. Best of all, regular foods taste just fine. At worst, the anti-corporate attitude of Whole Foods's suppliers kills people. The juice company Odwalla, for inexplicable reasons, touted that its fruit smoothies were not pasteurized. Since pasteurization is what prevents the spread of deadly diseases through food products, it was only a matter of time before a young girl was killed by Odwalla products. Since then Odwalla has pasteurized its products using a special 'flash pasteurization' process. Flash pasteurization, by the way, is more health food hype, as all pasteurized foods must be heated for the same amount of time to have any benefit.
Aside from peddling snake oil, Whole Foods has morphed in to the environmentalism racket. Without changing much of their product line, they are now a temple to the green religion. Organic foods are the answer to evil corporate farms and processed foods that kill the planet. Whole Foods stores are plastered with green propaganda, and their recycling area is so complicated as to be a self parody. More than a few Priuses drop by Whole Foods on their way home from the yoga studio.
Of course hardly anything is worse for the environment than organic foods. While some organic products, like bananas, are about the same as their regular cousins, most organic foods take far more resources to grow and distribute. The average organic product requires about a third more land per unit of output than its FDA approved equivalent. Organic food subsequently requires more water and tractor fuel as well. Because the organic cannons preclude preservatives or irradiation, the ultimate amount of food consumed by the end user is smaller still.
Organic foods burn more fossil fuels, clear more wildlife lands, and consume more fresh water than regular foods. This is further evidence that the green movement is not so much about helping the environment as it is a counter culture backlash against everything deemed 'corporate.' The most environmentally safe diet choice is vegetarianism, since meats require up to ten times the natural resources as staple plants. Because even Whole Foods cares about its profits, it proudly sells the full range of animal produce.
Still, nobody is forcing the Whole Foods faithful to pay extra for inferior products. What people do with their own time, money, and bodies is their own business. Blessedly, unlike in Europe, the US does not preferentially subsidize organic farmers over their more efficient competitors. So, the next time you consider Whole Foods to fill your refrigerator, ask yourself if you are not buying food so much as buying into a green washed, counter-culture religion you might find objectionable.
Hmmmmm
Cargill (sp?) has spoken?
Lets see, natural foods or something thats been irradiated, grown in a cage, genetically modified, grown in a vat, or scraped up off the floor and sold as filler.
Seems to me something towards the natural side is a little bit better.
Welcome to Free Republic.
Thank you for not posting a one line excerpt from your blog in order to drive hits to your blog. Thank you for posting the whole article.
Again, Welcome.
However, Whole Foods is a great American success story and I have been shopping there since they only had one store on earth.
I am not so sure I can agree with organic food being just as tasty and healthy as non-organic food. We buy our groceries from Trader Joe’s and anecdotally at least I can tell you that food is much better quality than what we get at other grocery stores. It is also a lot cheaper as well.
1) organic farming may well keep small US farms going, which means if the supply chain from South America goes bad, we might still eat
2) in addition to the hippy stuff, Whole Foods has lots of delicious and interesting ingredients that are hard to find elsewhere. Their produce section is a delight. Four kinds of kale! Baby artichokes!
3) I think moving away from hormone-injected livestock might be a good thing, though I don't understand what is bad about antibiotics
WF does carry and amazingly good selection of cheese and chocolate. I’d like to believe they are good for me but I know better.
I go to WF clones (Trader Joe’s mostly, Sunflower occasionally) because the food tastes good, and is often cheaper. All the “green” advertising around it I ignore, I really don’t care how many acres of rain forest are or are not destroyed for my food so long as it’s tasty.
Yet.
Nice piece. Could use some citation, though. Not because we don't trust you, but just because attribution gives cred.
I love the "Cargill speaks" one. WTF, hipster? WholeFood speaks?
There was a Whole Foods next to where I used to work in Portland and I loved getting lunch there. I got to the point of getting more of my food there, too. Some of the stuff can be quite tasty. It might be more expensive in some cases, but it’s a “whole” lot better (at least to my mouth it was...).
And boy! Did they ever have a cheese section, too. I like different cheeses from all over the world and they would have it, a great selection.
So, I wouldn’t be knocking a success story there...
Whole Foods’ organic products are probably less than 10% of their overall stock based on my personal experience shopping there.
However, I’ve found I can get basically the same stuff across the street at Trader Joe’s at a much cheaper price.
I like Trader Joe’s too. Unfortunately, we don’t have one near us.
I stop by there about once a week to purchase products otherwise not safe for me to eat when sold by "other chain stores".
What they do with the "organic" stuff is of no concern to me. I'm happy with a loaf of frozen glutenfree bread, or frozen gluten free buns. A box of highly overpriced crackers to eat along with well aged cheddar is a treat ~ but I get the cheddar at Safeway.
Depends on you what you want in a store I guess.
BTW, Safeway is now selling a frozen gluten free bread, and those Van's frozen gluten free waffles are to die for.
Trader Joe is owned by the same family that owns Aldi’s. It’s just the high priced spread.
Food procured locally does taste better.
Who can say that a tomato, picked in Mexico days before it would otherwise be ripe, packed in a reefer for days while it ripens, tastes better than a vine-ripened tomato grown in the town in which you live?
I've checked out the Whole Foods cheese cases and there's a lot of double and triple creams in there that kind of make it look like there's different stuff, but it's short on the aged end of things.
BTW, everybody carries that $22 a pound Australian 5 year old stuff these days ~ but we tried it and went back to our 2 year old Vermont white.
The Whole Foods goat cheese selection is identical to the Safeway selection and looks to be the same price. Trader Joe's is less ~ and sometimes they have hard goat cheese for less than $5 a pound (from France even).
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