UnWhole Foods
I'm growing to really dislike Whole Foods. Don't get me wrong--it's a lovely store. The food (especially produce) is exquisitely displayed, everything is very fresh and very tasty. But it is also horribly expensive, crawling with children-laden suburbanites, and has moved far, far away from any ideal of "whole foods" that it once tried to live up to.
For quite some time, I've had the idea in my head that something was wrong with the organic food market, and health-food market, and that food as described by "slow food" and local food movements provided a deeper alternative. Yet, I have also found that I have ideas about what (I think) is right and what I would like to be doing far sooner than I really fully understand them.
But the more I spend thinking about the differences between a place like Whole Foods (something Michael Pollan calls industrial organic) and locally & sustainably grown food, the more I really start to see and feel the difference. I've shopped at food co-ops and alternative health food stores for years (decades, really) and it is sad to see how so many of the alternatives have disappeared or become something else. Just this morning, while at Whole Foods (yes, I still shop there) looking for garlic, I found some. Organic even. But grown in China! Why would I want garlic that had to travel 7000+ miles (or whatever the distance). And then there was the beef. Organic beef. Reasonably priced. Tasted very good--especially as part of the Nachos we had for lunch. But then I started thinking back to Michael Pollan's book and his tracing of the corn industry in America.
What stuck in my brain was his spectrometer analysis of a fast food meal. On the surface the meal was a varitable breadbasket of diversity: burger, cheese, bread, dressing, soda, fries. But once he ran the meal through the spectrometer he could determine that the vast majority of the meal was derived from corn. And so I stood in Whole Foods wondering if the organic beef I was about to buy was really just the by-product of the well oiled corn industry that we have going on here in America.
At least the tortilla chips didn't hide their corn nature . . .
For quite some time, I've had the idea in my head that something was wrong with the organic food market, and health-food market, and that food as described by "slow food" and local food movements provided a deeper alternative. Yet, I have also found that I have ideas about what (I think) is right and what I would like to be doing far sooner than I really fully understand them.
But the more I spend thinking about the differences between a place like Whole Foods (something Michael Pollan calls industrial organic) and locally & sustainably grown food, the more I really start to see and feel the difference. I've shopped at food co-ops and alternative health food stores for years (decades, really) and it is sad to see how so many of the alternatives have disappeared or become something else. Just this morning, while at Whole Foods (yes, I still shop there) looking for garlic, I found some. Organic even. But grown in China! Why would I want garlic that had to travel 7000+ miles (or whatever the distance). And then there was the beef. Organic beef. Reasonably priced. Tasted very good--especially as part of the Nachos we had for lunch. But then I started thinking back to Michael Pollan's book and his tracing of the corn industry in America.
What stuck in my brain was his spectrometer analysis of a fast food meal. On the surface the meal was a varitable breadbasket of diversity: burger, cheese, bread, dressing, soda, fries. But once he ran the meal through the spectrometer he could determine that the vast majority of the meal was derived from corn. And so I stood in Whole Foods wondering if the organic beef I was about to buy was really just the by-product of the well oiled corn industry that we have going on here in America.
At least the tortilla chips didn't hide their corn nature . . .
posted by Urban Peasant at 2:10 PM
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