Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Aisle be damned
If a 'natural and organic' supermarket such as Whole Foods sells the same 
junk as everyone else, then what's the point?
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 December 2009 18.30 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/29/whole-foods-supermarkets

   Not long ago I made one of my periodic forays to Whole Foods, the 
all-natural-groceries conglomerate. My assignment was to buy a Christmas ham 
from a pig that had not suffered unduly, and that was relatively free of 
chemicals and antibiotics. I was somewhere between the Amy's organic soups 
and the own-label cans of vegetables when I came upon an unexpected sight: 
bottles of Heinz regular ketchup that, like much of the industrial food that 
comprises the American diet, is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup 
(HFCS).

As you may know, HFCS is among the laboratory-created synthetic foods 
targeted for elimination by activists, most notably the journalist Michael 
Pollan in his influential book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Though scientific 
opinion differs on whether HFCS is any worse for you than regular sugar, 
there's little doubt that its cheap ubiquity – a consequence of misguided 
government farming subsidies – has contributed significantly to our epidemics 
of obesity and type-two diabetes.

Thus I considered it a breach of faith that Whole Foods would carry such a 
product. Shopping there means you're going to pay more and drive farther than 
if you simply stocked up at the nearest supermarket. In return, it doesn't 
seem too much to ask that you be spared from having to worry about 
ingredients such as HFCS. So it was with a perverse sense of anticipation 
that I started reading Nick Paumgarten's 9,100-word profile of Whole Foods 
founder and chief executive John Mackey in the current issue of the New 
Yorker.

As Paumgarten observes, Mackey has stepped in it several times in recent 
years, engaging in embarrassing (and legally dubious) internet sock puppetry 
with regard to his acquisition of Wild Oats, a rival chain, and writing a 
commentary for the Wall Street Journal in opposition to government healthcare 
reform. The latter enraged his largely liberal customer base, engendering 
brief calls for a boycott.

What makes the New Yorker article valuable, though, is the way Paumgarten 
captures Mackey's "crazy uncle" and "right-wing hippie" personae and places 
them in the context of his radical libertarianism. In the course of talking 
(and talking, and talking), Mackey reveals an important contradiction that 
illustrates why Whole Foods simply isn't as good as it should be. On the one 
hand, Mackey, now a vegan, is absolutely committed to healthy food. On the 
other, his naive belief in individual responsibility informs not just his 
contempt for government but, in a sense, for his own company as well.

Consider, for instance, Mackey's much-criticized statement that "We sell a 
bunch of junk." In fact, Whole Foods sells meat, which Mackey eschews, as 
well as nutritionally empty snacks. This is not necessarily a bad thing. 
Meat, candy and potato chips have been with us for a long time, and, in their 
unadulterated, pre-industrial incarnations, were considerably less toxic than 
they are today.

But Mackey's libertarianism means that the consumer must always beware, even 
at Whole Foods. As Paumgarten writes of Mackey:

    His belief in the power of the individual is such that blame falls on 
individuals, too. In his view, it tends to be the fault of the unhealthy or 
fat person that he or she is unhealthy or fat. People just need to eat 
better....

    It matters less to him that our food system, for a dozen reasons, ... has 
been rigged to deliver unhealthy food at artificially low cost to a misguided 
public. People have the power and the means to choose rice and beans over Big 
Macs, and when they fail to do so they bring ruin on themselves, and on 
everyone else.

The trouble with this type of thinking is that, at its end point, it's our 
own fault if we buy ketchup loaded with high-fructose corn syrup – even if we 
got it at Whole Foods. After all, there was a shelf full of Heinz organic 
ketchup next to the regular variety. If you choose the cheap stuff, what 
concern is it of Mackey's? Whole Foods is a store that sells "a bunch of 
junk", not a shrine.

Except that Mackey misconceives an important part of his business. At a time 
when even Walmart is carrying organic foods, the niche Whole Foods ought to 
fill is that of the trusted guide. If I have to walk the aisles of Whole 
Foods with the same label-reading skepticism that I bring to supermarket 
shopping, well, I might as well go to the local supermarket. It carries more 
natural and organic foods than it used to, it's closer to our house and it's 
a lot cheaper.

Besides, as Paumgarten writes, Mackey's libertarianism ignores larger social 
and cultural forces. My wife and I would love to do better than Whole Foods – 
to buy most of our food from local farmers, and to leave the industrial-food 
system altogether. We've tried. But unless we are willing and able to devote 
a lot more time and money to the enterprise, the best we can manage is to buy 
produce from farmers markets during the growing season and milk from a nearby 
dairy.

For us, a place like Whole Foods should be an important way station between 
industrial food and something better. Mackey seems to understand that, but 
his blind exaltation of the individual misses some pretty important caveats.

Individuals live in a social setting, turning over some tasks so that they 
can specialise in others. I don't want to perform my own surgery or maintain 
my own roads. And I don't want to come home from the grocery store with 
unhealthy food only to be told it's my own damn fault.

Especially if I bought it at Whole Foods.