Whole Foods.

"Have you ever been primed? I mean has anyone ever deliberately influenced your subconscious mind and altered your perception of reality without your knowing it? Whole Foods Market, and others, are doing it to you right now." - Martin Lindstrom



That quote would've been so much more awesome without that last sentence.

Anyway, I was browsing Yahoo! News like I usually do, and this article about Whole Foods caught my eye.

Whole Foods gets a lot of shit. Everyone criticizes it. "It's expensive." "It's just as healthy as your regular store." "Organic food tastes like crap!" "The people who shop there are all stuck up health fiends."

And yeah, it's true, to a degree. It is expensive, some of the organic things don't taste that great, and you encounter the occasional Holier-Than-Thou shopper in yoga attire.

Though I was recently informed as to why some of it was so expensive, like the gluten free things. Most of the people who eat gluten free foods (pasta, bread, etc) are ones with health conditions, like Celiac Disease (damage to the intestinal lining of the small intestine due to eating things with gluten). Others, like my mother, just become extremely bloated when eating regular bread; it happens to me too. Celiac is much worse though, since if you were to continue to eat things with gluten, you could become very sick.

Anyway, so the gluten free things are so expensive (anywhere for that matter) since it's not in high demand. Some just substitute pasta with risotto instead of buying the gluten free pasta. And since it is an organic store, a lot of the bread and pasta there is gluten free.

So that's one more or less ticked off. I'm pretty sure they raise the prices a bit so they can make a profit, like every other business on the face of the earth. Not that it really makes it any better, but they're not the only ones doing it. I think I hear more people complaining about the price of Whole Foods than I do Apple products.


Now onto the article, getting a little side tracked here. It happens.

Honestly, these people are getting way too far ahead of themselves. I doubt Whole Foods or other grocery stores are trying to "brainwash" us into buying their shit. There's ways to sell things to us subliminally, that's true. But it's nothing new and everyone knows this, so why does this even count? We all know the shop we walk into has things set up a specific way to catch our attention.

Take the flowers for instant, in Lindstrom's article. As he said, the flowers are there to give you that "we're fresh" feeling when walking into the store. The article states this as if it's a bad thing, though. As if any of you want to walk into a store and say, "ah, this place looks like shit, perfect!" Really? I'd take fresh flowers over unkempt any day. I'm sure you, dear reader, would too! So no, that is not brainwashing, it's good business.

Then he goes on to complain about all of the ice. Again with the "we're so fresh" feeling. Your neighborhood store puts all of it's perishables in those long wall coolers. Whole Foods puts them in ice. Which I've honestly found just a tad annoying since then everything I touch is wet, but eh. Not a big problem. Lindstrom says that the ice is a symbolic gesture, like when other grocery stores spray the water onto the vegetables every so often. (You cannot deny your love for those things when they go off, so don't even try).

What he says, is that the stores don't have to do that. Well, yes, they don't have to, not if they want their produce to stay fresh. I've watched a ton of cooking shows in my day, and every chef you ask will say putting your vegetables in ice water will keep them fresh and vibrant. I'm pretty sure the ice would more or less do the same; since Whole Foods doesn't use preservatives (not nearly as much as a regular grocer, at least). So without the ice and the cold, everything will go bad.

Again, I'd like to see fresh things in my store instead of shit food. Seeing brown guacamole just isn't the same as green.

So getting to the point of this post; Why are there so many articles and people complaining about Whole Foods? It's a store that's providing us with healthy food. If McDonalds or Wendy's, or some other fast food joint was built, no one would complain, even though the quality of the food makes us feel bad, and hurts our bodies.

Seriously, who feels great after eating a fast food burger? Or take-out Chinese? But yet, people continue to eat it as if it were nothing. But bring up Whole Foods, and suddenly everyone goes ape shit, as if that was what is making us fat, feel bad, bloated, and hurting our bodies.

I think you're only being brainwashed to think you're always being brainwashed.