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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Whole Paycheck?
  • Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:50:29 -0700


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.






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