Whole Foods: Misleading the Masses?
| By Jim - Mar 22nd, 2006 at 11:08 am EST |
| Also listed in: Sustainable Politics Stapleton |
Circular filed under: I Should Have Guessed This Myself
Slate's Field Maloney has a good piece here on Whole Foods and how they take advantage of the perceived value of organic produce. It's partly our own fault, we have drawn a bright line between organic goods and virtue, but the actual geometry of the issue is not nearly so straightforward.
This actually dovetails nicely with this from NPR's reliably hilarious Andrei Codrescu. He accurately points out that the need to Push Product has, well, pushed all the other sorts of dialog out of the way.
I think Codrescu's piece informs the WF discussion. WF has, deliberately or otherwise, permitted their 'Message' to get tangled up with the information they give to their customers, and in many cases, the result winds up misleading consumers. That's unfortunate, but like I said, I probably should have guessed this myself.
Slate's Field Maloney has a good piece here on Whole Foods and how they take advantage of the perceived value of organic produce. It's partly our own fault, we have drawn a bright line between organic goods and virtue, but the actual geometry of the issue is not nearly so straightforward.
This actually dovetails nicely with this from NPR's reliably hilarious Andrei Codrescu. He accurately points out that the need to Push Product has, well, pushed all the other sorts of dialog out of the way.
I think Codrescu's piece informs the WF discussion. WF has, deliberately or otherwise, permitted their 'Message' to get tangled up with the information they give to their customers, and in many cases, the result winds up misleading consumers. That's unfortunate, but like I said, I probably should have guessed this myself.
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We beg and plead companies like Exxon and Wal-Mart to adopt more eco and worker friendly practices, yet when Whole Foods doesn't prove to be 100% progressive, we beat them up.
How many major corporations buy all their energy from renewable sources? Isn't organic food from Chile better than pesticide drenched apples (and thus rivers) from Washington?
Why give people doubts that companies like Costco, Chipotle, and Whole Foods aren't much better corporate citizens than Wal-Mart, Taco Bell, and Target?
The better corporate citizens might not be perfect, but they are much better.