I really don’t like Whole Foods. It’s snobby, overpriced, and, worst of all, sells homeopathic remedies and alt-medicine magazines. If they’re serious about health, they wouldn’t sell ineffectual—and therefore harmful to the afflicted—”remedies.”
But I digress. I became aware from this tw**t of a hilarious Facebook page, “Overheard at Whole Foods“. That page is as packed with woo as Sedona, Arizona!
But, as the Ginsu Knife people say, “WAIT! There’s more!”:
And my favorite:
We must at all costs maintain the organic integrity of our purchases!
h/t: Melissa Chen
As in all religions, the organic crowd must beware of the unclean.
They just want food that hasn’t been tampered with.As in the wealth of ‘cides used etc. But it is very hard to find such unless you grow it yourself really. It would be better if they were knowledgeable. This is terrible.
This is so bad I can’t laugh. It is too tragic to be funny. Lack of information isn’t as bad as wrong information. There is a great deal of wrong information out there.
“food that hasn’t been tampered with”
What the heck is that?
Sorry, that was poorly written on my part.
What they want is pre-industrial farming. No fungicides and insecticides created by Du Pont. There are some natural ones. Even tobacco plants have been used to keep pests away. Also breeding and releasing predators to take care of the parasites etc.
That is what they want. No processing or the least processing done. Our food is so over processed it is getting away from what food is.
Another reason to hate them: They sell vegetarian cat food.
Cats and other members of the suborder Feloidea are strict carnivores and have lost the ability to make certain organic compounds such as vitamin A, niacin, taurine and arginine which are available in their carnivorous diet.
Anyone who inflicts a vegetarian diet on a cat is dooming them to a slow and painful death by malnutrition.
You can supplement your cat’s diet with the chemicals they’d normally get from meat and they’re fine.
Chemicals? Heaven forfend! Whole Foods vitamins are made from spirituals, not chemicals.
I always thought they were made out of smoke and mirrors.
Whatever it is it is marked up high.
You could, if you knew what all those chemicals are and what amounts of each are needed.
Don’t put enough taurine in and your cat goes blind.
Not enough niacin and you get severe metabolic disorders in the skin and digestive organs.
Not enough arginine and you get immediate symptoms of ammonia toxicity which include drooling, vomiting, lethargy and even convulsions.
How can you tell if a cat is lethargic?
Good point.
Stopped breathing ?
LOL @ both of you!
“Hate” them do you? Next thing you know you will threaten them then kill them. Calm down and don’t hate. Don’t let them get away with it either. Hate is that emotion that shuts down the higher functions of your mind. Don’t go there.
Keep those non-vegan cooties away from me! 🙂
Yes, this is the United States where one we can find stupidity just by lifting your gaze above the ground.
We become more like the movie “Idiocracy” every day.
I’ve always wondered why such a technologically advanced country as the United States – possibly the most technologically advanced country on the planet – is also home to the most retarded, stupid people in the First World.
It does fit the American character though. I’ve noticed that when Americans put their mind to something, they COMMIT to it. There’s hardly any moderation, in my view. That’s also what makes the USA so interesting.
It’s also a matter of numbers; the USA is one of the most populous nations on earth. If you scoured all of the EU you’d probably find a similar number of extreme idiots. I can guarantee China and India have their fair share.
We have more than a fair share. India has Ministry of Ayush for Ayurveda, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy.
http://www.indianmedicine.nic.in/
Unfortunately, we have more than our fair share. We even have a ‘Ministry of Ayush’ for Ayurveda, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy.
http://www.indianmedicine.nic.in/
But interestingly US states 26-51 have fewer inhabitants than New Zealand – just thought people would like to know.
Which is the 51st and when was it admitted?
Possible US states:
Albania
Cuba
Greenland
Guyana
Iceland
Panama
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Saipan
Taiwan
Yucatan
Are possibles.
same in Germany…
the job center even pays for an education in astrology…
Just overheard: “Soon they’re going to be able to 3D-print MEDICATIONS!”
That was probably a reference to the news story discussed in this recent blog entry:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/08/05/10407
(strongly recommend that blog, btw)
I wonder how much better European countries are. I’ve got friends from Austria and Germany, and while my friends are well educated enough to be able to come over to the U.S. and get jobs easily, the stories they tell me about their parents, siblings, and cousins make me think the average European is much like the average American. Moving away from anecdotes, every couple years I take a look at the NSF’s science and engineering indicators report, which includes a comparison of the basic scientific literacy of the U.S. compared to other countries, and the percentage of people answering basic factual questions correctly is pretty similar (and depressingly low) everywhere.
Stupid is everywhere.
That is exactly my thought as well. Whole foods or whole paycheck does not have a corner on that, but they do make a pretty good try.
Having heard some Dutch people talk about their ‘biological’ food (thats what they call organic here), they’re no better.
Its a middle class cult, that turns asceticism on its head. You consume your way to purity.
“Its a middle class cult, that turns asceticism on its head. You consume your way to purity.”
That’s very good. 🙂
The picture might be distorted a bit because even if it were true that average stupid is distributed equally in both populations, extreme stupid does not seem to penetrate so high up into the upper reaches of celebrity and influence as it does in the US.
No European, Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson, Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin come readily to mind.
You are correct. Not only do we have such cretins, but they each have large followings. Mike Huckabee would be laughed off the stage in Europe.
Not if Chuck Norris were around he wouldn’t!!!
“I’ve always wondered why such a technologically advanced country as the United States – possibly the most technologically advanced country on the planet – is also home to the most retarded, stupid people in the First World.”
Answers its own question, I think. The advanced tech permits morons to function without ever learning to do anything practical. So the technology becomes ‘magic’ both by becoming more advanced AND by [some] users becoming more ignorant.
cr
Japan is the more advanced, at least in relation to its population. We may catch up one day.
http://www.eater.com/2015/8/3/9090797/whole-foods-asparagus-water-wtf
J Haploid Christ! But on further thought, if that asparagus water was used homeopathically, it would probably represent a lifetime supply!
My first thought was asparagus piss. Surely they wouldn’t bottle that.
Of course they do – just visit your local Ayurvedic health shop.
Perhaps…Piss Asparagus.
Noted in passing, from Wikipedia (I vaguely seem to recall this may have been discussed here before):
In 2010, the company 23andMe published a genome-wide association study on whether participants have “ever noticed a peculiar odor when you pee after eating asparagus?”[44]. This study pinpointed a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in a cluster of olfactory genes associated with the ability to detect the odor. While this SNP did not explain all of the difference in detection between people, it provides support for the theory that there are genetic differences in olfactory receptors that lead people to be unable to smell these odorous compounds.
And one of the first studies on ID of the odoriferous constituent:
Nencki, Marceli (1891). “Ueber das vorkommen von methylmercaptan im menschlichen harn nach spargelgenuss”. Arch Exp Path Pharmak 28 (3–4): 206–209. doi:10.1007/BF01824333.
So it’s the ability to detect the odor that differs, not the ability to produce the odiferous pee itself??
Interesting, I also did not realise this.
I can do a scientific test sometime soon, as my wife cannot smell it and I can.
Yay science!
Please report back.
I believe (probably saw it on Derek Lowe’s blog**) that some people just don’t have the smell receptors for certain odours. So they can happily work oblivious to the anguish their compatriots are suffering.
Or, sometimes high concentrations of the noxious substance poison the smell receptors – e.g. the dangerous (for that reason) hydrogen sulphide.
cr
(**Things I Won’t Work With
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/
– a highly entertaining blog dedicated to *real* chemicals, ones which either (a) explode violently (b) burst into flames (c) smell unbelievably foul or (d) cause inevitable horrible death by poisoning, often several of those)
I get a kick out of the “natural” folk who claim that the reason asparagus pee smells is that it is detoxing you. The smell is their proof that all kinds of evil chemicals are removed from your body by eating it.
Personally I love the stuff and grill it all the time. I must have really clean innards.
Lol – yeah, I must have squeaky clean innards, too, because asparagus pee. Not sure it cleans out my mind, though…
I’ve always found it strange that being a “liberal” and being into “alternative medicine” are so frequently coupled together in the popular imagination. If you examine the anti-science, anti-reason, anti-progressive roots of alt med it so clearly rests on romantic ideas and epistemic privileges which are in direct rebellion against liberal principles.
Proponents instead need to think like conservatives, cutting themselves off from the spirit of free inquiry and forming little self-affirming bubbles where no criticism is allowed. No progress is possible because no mistakes can be caught and thus corrected. They’ve formed a little tribe which worships subjective, mystical truths and conspiracy-style thinking abounds, shutting down dissent.
Woo only mimics what it really means to be “open-minded.” Science actually carries it through.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. -Chomsky
A sociologist I saw lecture as an undergrad distinguished “conservatism of faith” and “conservatism of lack of faith”. Maybe there are two kinds of liberals as well.
I think you’ll find far more than 2 types if you want to start classifying liberals. In any sizable population you get all sorts of people.
Woo Hoo and what Sastra said so well!!
I find it strange, too, especially considering that actual Republican party platforms endorse these positions. Here’s one plank from the 2010 Texas Republican platform*:
And here’s one from the 2012 platform:
And here’s another from the 2012 platform – not quite related to Whole Foods, but certainly part of the alternative medicine problem:
*These planks could possibly be in the latest platform, but I had these written down on my personal blog from before and didn’t feel like searching the latest platform.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has a son-law in the vitamin and supplement business.
Indeed: As always, follow the money.
The alt med types tend to be more “progressive” then liberal. I know it seems a stupid semantic difference but it kind of is important. Progressive much more likely to care mostly about social issues and buy into post mod type thinking.
The puzzling thing here then is how there can be a concept of “progress” if all ways and beliefs have equal value. We advance by catching out mistakes and learning from them. But I’ve been told — very smugly, I might add — that in alternative medicine there’s no such thing as a “mistake.” No right, no wrong; just different. Something either is, or is not, right for you and if it isn’t don’t deny it to someone else. One form of “healing” is therefore never measured against any other — or any objective standard at all, for that matter .
So alternative medicine never changes, grows, or improves. Not just because there’s no validity to it, but because the self-identified “progressives” have cut the very notion of progress out of the entire issue.
Oh great! We have other ways of knowing so I guess it follows that we have other ways of healing!
I don’t think I agree with this. I consider myself a liberal and a progressive.
“Progressive” is a label with much deeper roots than just current usage, especially here in Wisconsin where the word is associated with the early 20th Century movement that led to good government, fair labor policies, and women voting. “Fighting Bob” La Follette was a Progressive long before Whole Foods opened it’s first door.
I think the modern use of “progressive” is simply a reclaiming an old mantle of non-wishy-washy liberalism. “Liberal” got turned into a slur word by the conservative movement and many Democrat “triangulation types” (Bill Clinton, etc.) annoyed us more left-oriented folk. “Progressive” came into use again as a way to distinguish more left-oriented.
I certainly have no tolerance for the post mod, anti-GMO, homeopath folk. They exist across the political spectrum.
Agree, and that was my understanding of the resurgence of “progressive” too.
“I think the modern use of “progressive” is simply a reclaiming an old mantle of non-wishy-washy liberalism.”
Correct!
They have also borrowed the romantic reaction to science from the far right – many of the so-called critiques go via Heidegger, who was a *Nazi*, for crying out loud. (Also, if you’re appealing to that guy, isn’t that a case of explaining the obscure by the almost incomprehensible?)
Do definitely have missed the part about Right Wingers and their “Christian diet, Christian economics” etc. Those Liberals aren’t the only ones going that way.
The conspiracies may be different, but it performs the same function.
So the problem extends across the political spectrum.
Oh this is just too much!! And these people have the right to vote not to mention procreate?!!
They are procreating like mad! And they are checking the ingredients on snacks for GMOs and what not; I remember we were helping our preschoolers make tacos, and one mom was very uncomfortable that the beans I brought were in a can.
And they are handing out lists of foods that the other parents can’t send to school because their delicate progeny are deathly allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, and/or eggs. Which can be serious allergens! If you eat them! So teach your kid to, you know, not eat them (like we do in our house with our food allergies).
Also, give them antihistimines and anti-inflammatories as indicated and make sure any adults watching your kid know how to use the epinephrine injector. I know; crazy!
One parent claimed her daughter had all of the above and asked in a mass email to every parent in class – hand to Ceiling Cat this is true – that the other children not have eggs for breakfast because airborne egg matter could put her kid in anaphylaxis.
It’s all a part of this mass delusion/obession around hygiene, safety, and purity, it seems to me, under which a large portion – maybe 10% to 40% I’d wager – of my generation and socioeconomic bracket operate. And the millenials are coming of age and extending it to the Safe Spaces and whatnot. Not sure of the exact scope and dynamics, but I agree with the manner commenters here who see it all as a group of related dysfunctions.
This may be the one social phenomenon for it is parsimonious to blame on White Privilege … !
Sounds like my kids school.
I suspect it’s not so much their procreating but that stupid ideas are contagious. Idiocy has always spread like the common cold and is never easy to combat.
Yes the memes find fertile ground in minds ready to receive them. People well grounded in analytical thinking and a general skepticism would bring that down. But since such are not taught, you seem to have to develop it on your own so there you go. Down the primrose path to the shining city on the hill.
That brings up an interesting angle, actually, because I thought that the Whole Foods crowd are generally young people who would also be using some form of birth control (at least for a time). So what would they use? Latex condoms? But that is so synthetic. Birth control pills? Are you kidding?
There’s probably an app that they use.
I hope they don’t put the phone anywhere weird.
It would work, though. 😉
cr
Apple’s next product: the iIUD.
iUD
+1
Rhythm method. Its natural and 10% failure rate!!
Gynecologists have a technical term for women who rely on the rhythm method: “mothers.”
b&
Funny.
Well it is recommended by the Catholic Church after all.
I worked with someone who claimed that if she smelled a banana she could die of anaphylaxis. A banana! Guess who told her that! Her naturopath. When one of the guys working with her started handing out no banana signs I snapped and went on a big rant because I’m sensitive to real allergens and I don’t walk around hanging out notes. Not to mention would she not be allergic to the acetone in the paint which permeated the paint factory our office was next to if she were allergic to banana smell?
I don’t care for bananas, probably because of some long-since-forgotten unpleasant experience in childhood. But I’d probably figure out some innocent excuse to, for example, warm up some banana bread in the microwave….
b&
This reminds me of the insane obsession with food allergies in schools and daycare centers now. I had my kids go to a daycare center last week for a few days because the regular sitter we use was gone. They wouldn’t let them bring anything not pre-wrapped because of “food allergies.” Not peanut allergies, mind you, which has been an issue for several years now, but food allergies in general.
So I went and looked up some information and found that 150 to 200 people per year in the United States die from food allergies. People, not just kids! So that’s a death rate of maybe 1 in 2 million. We may as well recommend kids don’t attend school at all for the risk of dying in an automobile accident is far greater than dying of a food allergy attack. Best everyone stay home wrapped in a bubble…
Yeah but now you have the modern lawyered-up pass-the-buck health&safety bullshit machine to contend with.
If the kiddiewinks get squashed into a pancake by a truck on their way home the daycare isn’t liable. If they develop an itch on the back of their hand that could have been caused by something they came into contact with, the daycare could be sued.
Gotta get the priorities right.
cr
Any allergy is because the normal body defenses are turned against the person. So how did this happen in the first place, and why does it seem to be growing?
People’s environments seem to be getting “too clean”. Too voided of all microbes, dirt, etc. Kids that grow up on farms (last studies I heard about) tend not to become allergic.
True of allergies. True of asthma.
True of dogmatism. If one grows up in an environment scrubbed clean (of microbes, dirt, ideas), one is susceptible to and unable to cope with many ailments.
Wow. Who knew there was a danger even less likely than airborne egg matter?
That plaque looks like something that would be in the Onion.
Whole-paycheck is very gimmicky, and obviously many of their customers are blinkered by woo.
Reblogged this on Monkey Dance and commented:
Absolutely priceless if so inclined. From Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True.
I kinda liked Whole Foods when the first one opened near me, since a trip there would sate my nostalgie de la boue for the old-time health-food shops run by relict hippies in the bohemian quarters I frequented in the ’70s. I can’t stand the joints anymore, now that they’re overrun by bobos who make the sort of asinine comments recounted in this post.
I went to one once – that was enough.
The Costco I frequent has three kinds of coffee grinders for customer use: “Flavored Coffees Only” (I guess maybe some people are such purists or are vanilla-averse), “Straight Coffee” (which I find hilarious because I am immature), and – of course! – “Organic Coffee” because apparently that matters.
So it’s not just Whole Foods, at least not in the CA Bay Area anyway, it’s a woo epidemic.
John Oliver’s bit last week about the Whole Foods $40 asparagus water was hilarious.
Straight coffee just sounds so last century; but who is buying inorganic coffee?
Right? Silicon- and arsenic-based coffees, not so tasty.
I might understand if they provided a separate grinder for Civet-poop coffee, though that would be equally unnecessary.
Well, I agree with keeping the nastie, nastie flavored coffee away from the right-thinking unflavored coffee. A little contamination goes a long way in my opinion.
+1
I don’t even drink coffee (it makes me super edgy) but love the smell of the good stuff – and HATE the smell of the flavored stuff I smell in coffee shops and which my bf has, on thsnkfully rare occasions, chosen to bring into the house. They seem to smell so fake.
A single cup (8 oz / 250 ml) of a good coffee properly roasted and brewed well isn’t going to have enough caffeine to make most people super edgy. It’s when you start going down the Starbucks path, of over-roasted over-sized over-sugared coffee-like beverages, that single-“portion” stimulant doses get into territory that most non-addicted people start to get super edgy. Or, of course, similarly, when the waitress at the diner ensures your cup is never more than an inch from the top and you don’t realize you’ve just drunk an entire pot.
Again…if you can find a local roaster, a sole proprietor type of shop, one that has as many non-blended varieties on offer as blends, and probably operates out of a warehouse in the light industrial block rather than a boutique storefront…that’s where the treasures are typically found. At least the one locally (Cortez Coffee) does it because Ron Cortez is passionate about coffee and loves experimenting with anything he thinks might have a chance of being worthwhile.
b&
I like Instant. Only.
Can’t stand the ‘real’ stuff – or the BS that accompanies it 🙁
cr
a-coffee-ist
That discussion on aesthetics and an objective definition of what’s “better” springs instantly to mind.
You are, of course, an inferior, uncultured, boorish heathen with absolutely no sense of taste. But you would declare the exact same of me…and we neither of us have an objective means of determining why I’m so clearly right and you’re just a poopyhead.
b&
“You are, of course, an inferior, uncultured, boorish heathen with absolutely no sense of taste.”
Noted 😉
I have to admit I like my coffee weak, white and sweet. ‘Proper’ coffee is often much too strong for my taste.
I also have an aversion to pretentiousness and currently coffee seems to have gathered around itself a cloud of snobbishness only rivalled by wine. So it fits with my iconoclastic nature to short-cut all the elaborate preparation (and the queue for the impossibly complicated and unreliable coffee machine at work) by just bunging a teaspoon of Instant into a mug and adding hot water.
I’m NOT saying that well-made ‘real’ coffee is all the same or that all ‘real’ coffee enthusiasts are full of it – just that, like wine, there’s a large poseur element.
cr
There’s definitely a large poseur element to it, as with anything else gourmet.
But there really is a big difference between good coffee and the drek served many places — and good coffee can be made on the cheap, for far less per serving than the notorious K-Cup.
My own equipment is very simple. I spent a somewhat embarrassing amount of money on a grinder, but you can get cheap ones that are not bad. I use a French Press pot, which costs about as much as the cheap grinder. I have an electric kettle with a built-in thermostat, but only because I’m lazy; anything that heats water plus a thermometer will do. Oh — and a cheap sifter. And a scale. Beans, as I mentioned, I get from a local roaster.
As the water’s heating, I weight out and grind the beans and sift the grinds; what falls through the sifter I’ll save and use in an hand-me-down cheap countertop espresso machine, just because I hate to sett most anything go to waste. What doesn’t fall through goes in the pot. Ten times as much 92°C distilled water (by weight, and I have a countertop distiller that’s already paid for itself over buying 60¢ gallon jugs) as beans gets poured over the grinds. I then press the plunger just enough to keep the grinds submerged, wait several minutes, and pour out the coffee into a thermos.
So, rather than toss a spoonful of powder into a mug with hot water…I grind the beans, toss them into a mug, wait, and pour the coffee to a thermos. Not all that much different….
b&
I’m not most people…I drink two sips of coffee and I can’t sleep for days. Even coffee in desserts. Really sensitive to caffeine, and only drink very weak (gnat’s piss) tea. However, I don’t hang signs around my neck attesting to the fact;-)
This is a blessing. I’d pay good money to have your sensitivity. I can’t seem to consume enough to get me to a point where I don’t feel like I need a nap immediately.
Ah…then I’m afraid you would do best to avoid the coffee ice cream Mom and Dad made the other day and sent me home with. Really good stuff, but they made it with finely-ground whole coffee beans….
b&
Yup – not my thing, but then there’s more for you!!
Any coffee so bad it needs to be contaminated with the stuff they use for flavorings isn’t worth drinking.
Then again…I’ve had Starbucks K-Cup coffee…and the contamination definitely represents a significant improvement in that case….
b&
Irish Coffee, Spanish Coffee, etc., make nice desserts in some circumstances.
Oh, to be sure, there’re all sorts of wonderful culinary uses for coffee…but they should all be made with the good stuff that you’d also be happy to drink black.
Much like wine…don’t cook with wine you wouldn’t drink. Doesn’t necessarily need to be the best-of-the-best…but, if it’s not worth drinking as it is, it’s not worth drinking in adulterated form, either.
b&
Agreed, and with no sarcasm. I buy good coffee for the flavor. I have a very sensitive palate.
Straight coffee. Hmmmmm I hope they have trans and bi coffee as it’s rather privledged of them to only offer straight coffee. I think it’s a micro aggression.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee when I read that, or else I’d be cleaning the spray off the laptop. And that would have been coffee abuse, which has got to be more of a macro aggression than a micro aggression.
…never did think to ask my coffee for its gender self-identification…and what kind of aggression does it represent that I hand-grind all of them without care for their sexual preferences?
b&
I just Googled ‘caffeine’ and I don’t think ‘straight’ coffee is possible (unless some sort of decaf). Caffeine has a _double_ ring.
OTOH it is of course, organic, however manufactured.
cr
So…you’re saying it’s into the swinging scene? Not that there’s anything worng with that.
b&
Heh, I’m still thinking chemicals (the mention of ‘trans’ set me off), so ‘straight’ coffee wouldn’t contain any ring compounds (sometimes known as ‘aromatics’).
For once I *wasn’t* thinking about gender (or, to put it bluntly, sex). I’m sorry, it won’t happen again 😉
cr
Must have caught you in the middle of the seven minutes….
b&
I guess you’re referring to:
http://xkcd.com/1564/
(Randall seems to have it down as seven _seconds_. Obviously a fast worker)
cr
Seven seconds!? Damn. Takes me more time than that just to remember where I left my keys….
b&
and is there bi- and gay-fat to go with the trans fat? I do know there is homo milk;-)
Maybe half-and half is considered bi?
Something tells me I don’t want to know about the cream….
b&
😉
Here in Canuckland it does say Homo Milk on the whole milk cartons.
You’re good as long as you know what pronouns they prefer.
You are so good at working in the micro aggression comment! Jealous.
There’s been a lot of criticism of Whole Foods for a whole lotta things. False health claims have been noted in Slate and the Daily Beast.
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods_Market#Criticism_and_controversy
The local Whole Foods around here (where I have never shopped for food) does have in-store massage therapists. I’ve never been there to get massage either as there are a lot of other relatively low-priced places. But now I am curious if the ones at WF push Reiki or aromatherapy or other woo-ish stuff that many masseuses do.
Re “page [Overheard at Whole Foods] is as packed with woo as Sedona, Arizona!”
Thankfully, although Sedona is quite a New Age capital, it also hosts good jazz and bluegrass festivals. That now raises the question of whether I would go to a bluegrass concert at Whole Foods. As far as I know Farmer’s Market and Village Market are the only grocery stores around here with live music, so I don’t have to deal with that question.
(No good Westerns have been filmed in Whole Foods either so I don’t have to deal with that question either. Well, that’s a relief.)
I was dismayed at hearing 80s songs playing in my local grocery store. I guess I’m finally old & the music that was popular when I was young is now folgey music.
I was dismayed at hearing 80s songs even during the 80s.
Many of them pipe in music from some radio station.
+1
There’s a Whole Foods next door to the bike shop that I frequent and I’ve noticed that many of their customers are very fit, attractive women. While I believe that their premises are wrong, I’m not complaining about the results. If woo gets you motivated to take better care of yourself, then go for it (with the caveat that some woo is harmful and should be avoided). Mostly, the stuff just costs more and if you’re willing to pay more…
I suspect that the attractiveness and/or fitness of the customers predates their attendance at WF, and is a byproduct of the affluent locales into which the stores are dropped.
There is something amusingly creepy about reading your comment then looking at your gravatar. 🙂
Go ahead…eat from the tree of knowledge, what could it hurt?
Ha ha. Exactly.
Too bad Adam and Eve didn’t get to the other forbidden tree, The Tree of Immortality. Had they eaten it we would be considered fellow deities by JHVH.
I go to Whole Foods on Saturdays to pick up some fish to grill. Their selection is better than the alternatives around here. And I can get pretty good fake hot dogs and other fake meat there and the beer selection is pretty good. But if I buy any vegetables there I make sure to pick only the “conventional” versions. The woo-products (non-GMO, homeopathic, bullshit) are really annoying.
I wonder if those “heard at Whole Foods” comments are just made-up. I know there are people who are that
stupid uninformed out there, but still…Damn!HTML fail!Vegetables coated in actual bullshit is organic soon as the bull was grass fed, correct?
I’m imagining wooish carrots lipping you off now! Taunting you with trumpesque remarks.
i always thought it was called “whole paycheck”
I love that there is a Craniosacral Therapy business across the street from the newest Whole Foods in San Jose, CA. You can see a picture at the article I wrote two months ago about how the two businesses cater to the same clientele (just google “whole foods craniosacral”).
To be honest, that site sounds just like a bunch of made-up comments, urban legends like the ridiculous (but non-existent) American law suits – like the guy who put his RV on cruise control, then went in the back to brew coffee and later sued the RV company cause it didn’t say in the manual that you can’t leave the driver’s seat. Those were made up to illustrate a “point” about the stupidity of Americans.
I don’t believe a single one of these overheard statements – in fact the one with the vegan non-donors were a cartoon joke published in a German paper a couple of months ago.
Agreed. A Facebook page of “Dumb Blonde Jokes” would not warrant the conclusion that actual blondes really said those things.
Have you ever worked service industry? I can’t vouch for any comments on that site, but similar statements or behavior? I see it all the time.
I’m amazed that there haven’t also been a flood of signs and utterances reflecting the current anti-GMO hysteria sweeping woolandia.
“To maintain the organic integrity of your purchase . . .”
I think somewhere, the ghost of PT Barnum is smiling.
I am thinking of coming out with 100% carbon free organic products. Also, 50% less hydrogen and oxygen.
Good idea,Bob,carbon is now, officially, pollution.
They’re recklessly selling the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide to a gullible public.
And it’s polluted with dangerous quantities of incredibly reactive hydrogen hydroxide, as well as oxygen dihydride.
cr
Dihydrogen monoxide is bad enough…but they also sell dihydrogen dioxide. At least it’s not dihydrogen trioxide….
b&
I wonder if a majority of Whole Foods shoppers fit these stereotypes? I’m not sure we have any data to test this.
Personally, I go there for the produce, packaged cookies without trans-fats or preservatives, fresh cheeses, etc. In my opinion, their produce is fresher and tastier than Giant or Safeway or my local Harris Teeter.
Hmmm, is avoiding trans-fat woo? Maybe I am one of them!
I think other than Oreo cookies, they have taken the trans fats out of everything else.
I love the cheese selection as well.
Does this mean that I can’t bring my organic apples to a laser light show because they might get hit by laser beams??
sigh.
Are Wholefoods shoppers also reminded to not allow their children to sit on the bread slicer, lest customers get a little behind in their orders?
Hee hee
Some commenters positively seem to be foaming out of their mouths. I wonder who actually is the *real* caricature in this here post …
…or who might be the agent provocateur.
Whole Foods: Where Whole Fools go shopping. Marketing sure does work.
I patronize Whole Paycheck for one reason more than any other: their ethical treatment standards for meat. And it’s more convenient to do the rest of my grocery shopping there than to go bouncing all over town looking to save a few dollars, so they’re the default option.
Just as it never occurs to me to go down the interior aisles of any other grocery store where all they’ve got is shelf after shelf of pre-packaged sugar frosted sugar candies and carbonated syrup, it never occurs to me go down the interior aisles of Whole Paycheck where the woo is. And, I gotta say…all things considered, you’re much better off indulging yourself on single sugar pills and a few drops of water than on the junk that takes its place in other markets.
b&
This is my take on it as well. There’s a lot of crap for sale in any large grocery store, and it’s easy enough to avoid the aisles containing the stuff you don’t want.
Of the stores easily accessible to me, Whole Foods has hands down the best produce, the freshest fish (sustainably harvested), the largest selection of good cheeses and locally baked artisan breads, and so on.
If you want to see woo, check out any large Asian market. Whole Foods has nothing on them in that department.
And I daresay you can overhear some pretty stupid stuff in the checkout line at Walmart or Target.
Locally baked artisan breads? I’m jealous… the one here is pretty poor when it comes to breads. I never buy bread from them as a result.
Yeah, he really got my attention with the bread comment. Fresh sustainable fish too. And others’ comments about cheeses.
There aren’t any Whole Paychecks near me; but one is apparently in the works.
All the details have long since been forgotten but I recall watching a documentary on nutrition and the advice of one of the people interviewed was to shop the periphery of a grocery store which is where the fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, milk and bread is and avoid the centre aisles which is where the processed crap is.
Makes for a quicker shopping trip as well.
Michael Pollan gives that advice.
I love Whole Foods. Their two flagship stores in Austin are amazing. Their produce section is larger than most grocery stores and the prices are often less than conventional grocery stores. Their butcher counter is at least 50 yards long and the selection is remarkable.
Sure they have woo and cater to those customers — they used to have tanks with live lobsters and crab that they’d steam for you while you shopped but removed them at the request of their woo-ish customers who couldn’t stand the thought of crustaceans being killed in the back room.
But that’s not enough for me to not shop through their miles of quality meat, fish, cheese, and produce. I find it worth paying for.
Your mileage may vary.
I used to go to one of their two original stores in Austin. It was small. Granola and coffee beans seemed to take up about half the store. Which is what I went there for. Easily the best coffee beans in town at that time. Also, the music they played in the store was just awesome.
It’s funny isn’t it, that you can go to a restaurant with a tank of lobster and fish that will be killed and cooked for you on the spot but you never see a restaurant with a cage full of cute baby rabbits that will be transformed into roast rabbit with fennel.
Although that did not seem to be the case when we visited the outdoor market in Beijing a few years ago.
I think that’s simple pragmatics. Butchered meat can be refrigerated for several days without significant loss of quality. In some cases the quality even improves; aged beef is high-end stuff. Aged fish, not so much.
Until some other place has bulk dry foods, I must patronize the organic markets. Their bulk coffee is on par in quality and price with other places.
The local Whole Paycheck here also has decent bulk coffee…but there’s also a good chance that there’s a small roastery near you with even better coffee that deserves your business. In Tempe, that would be Cortez Coffee….
b&
It’s really only a case of if I’m there for other things and if I also need some coffee beans. I’ve never gone there for the express purpose of purchasing coffee.
And by bulk dry foods I mean things like lentils, beans, rice, nuts and spices. Food-food, not coffee which is recreational.
I probably shouldn’t admit this…but I get those kinds of bulk foods from the Mormons. Honeyville Farms is a big wheat grower somewhere in Mormonland, and they’ve got a couple retail stores here and there, including one just a couple miles away. They cater to both the commercial bakeries and the Moron disaster preparedness crowd. You can buy dirt-cheap high-quality 25# and 50# sacks of pretty much any kind of grain or legume. Hell, it’s probably where Whole Paycheck gets their bulk goods.
Anyway, a 25# sack of rice and a 25# sack of beans makes for an insane number of meals, all for less than dinner and a movie. Right now I’m looking at half a dozen plastic buckets under a table in the kitchen, full of rice, beans, and wheat (which I grind for bread) that cost me less than I’d spend in a couple weeks at Whole Paycheck and which will last me years — and which I could easily survive off of for at least a few months, probably more, if I had to.
b&
Nothing wrong with that, I doubt whether beans can be religiously indoctrinated. 😉
“I doubt whether beans can be religiously indoctrinated.”
Rice, on the other hand …
I wouldn’t knock the preppers too much. Sure, most of them are probably a little insane, but thanks to businesses catering to them I can buy survival meal kits that I can stow away for when storms knock the power out for a few days at a time.
They’re also good for camping supplies and the like.
But they’re also nuts…the types of disasters you need to prepare for are things like hurricanes on the Gulf coasts, earthquakes on the Pacific Rim, ice storms in the Northeast, and so on. And that typically means something like a week or so of non-perishable food, some sort of camp stove, and the water in your hot water tank. And everything else that you should already have around the house…first aid kit, cleaning supplies, clothing suitable for the regional climate, and so on.
Preparing for the End of Days is a joke…yet that’s what so many of them do. I remember seeing Honeyville selling an emergency food bucket with a couple hundred freeze-dried meals in it marketed for a family of four, or something like that. They’ve got thousand-gallon emergency water tanks. That sort of thing. Insanity.
b&
Mormons, generally, make good neighbors — until they vote! And why not buy from the farmers.
Ben, isn’t AZ well into the heart of Mormon country? (Well, the northern strip certainly is, the beating heart of the FLDS church. Colorado City, etc.)
It’s spotty. There’re probably some isolated re-reformed offshoots up north such as you’re referring to. Mesa has a very substantial official presence, including a large tabernacle (or whatever). There’s even an LSD divinity school on the Arizona State University campus…but entirely unaffiliated with the University and not even any mention of it in any official publication other than maybe on a campus map. Elsewhere they might have somewhat disproportionately higher numbers demographically, but not hugely so.
b&
LSD? Not LDS? 🙂
I figgered Ben done did that on porpoise🐬
You know my tuna. 🎶🐟
b&
Eric??
Holy mackerel! 🐠
I’m glad we can all engage in such soleful discussion.
b&
On that, we never flounder.
Except those on squid roe, of course.
b&
Holy Mackerel, there, Kingfish
Thoughtful of you to inklude them!
Just penning my thoughts as the tide moves me….
b&
I ascribe that to your organization skills.
You wouldn’t think much of my organizational skills if you saw my living room right now….
b&
Be more chairitable to yourself. It’s not sofa bad.
The problem, I think, is that my divan is satin….
b&
You just need room to reflect
Reflectively, the room needs just me.
b&
You’ve got one a them underwater-writin’ ink pens??
I’m half tempted to write something about the conditions in which my pen is wet, but something tells me I’d better not…at least, not if I don’t want to get voted off the island….
b&
Because the pen is a potent phallic symbol (she wrote, trying to set Ben up).
I’m up! I’m up!
…and did you really have to dump the bucket of cold water over my head?
b&
“an LSD divinity school”
I’d go for that.
God is a magic mushroom.
cr
…ergot Jesus?
b&
Speak for yourself!
Well.. I don’t consume coffee for the nutritional value!
Really? I do. Without my morning visit to the coffee shop I’d likely evaporate or something! 😉
Sub
Ours has an excellent selection of cheese and also really good prepared foods ( with lots of free samples). I can get much better produce at other stores and have not been all that impressed with the meat and fish. Also good chocolate meringue cookies 🙂
I like their sandwiches & such too. I haven’t been in a while. Now I’m hungry.
I also dislike Whole Foods because John Mackey, the CEO, belongs to the church of Ayn Rand and his shenanigans are no different than those of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates.
Yes, the owner is a Libertarian nutjob. And I’d rather not give somebody like that my business. But it’s not like the Waltons or the owners of any other large retail chain are any less sociopathic, yet I don’t hear those criticizing Whole Paycheck on those grounds similarly eschewing the patronage of those stores.
Find me another place to buy meat with ethical standards no worse than those at Whole Paycheck and that does meaningfully better than they do on some of these other scales, and I’ll switch. I’ll even drive a bit farther out of the way and spend a bit more money to do so.
The most likely such alternative locally would be AJ’s, a small local upscale boutique chain run by the Basha’s family — which also runs a couple other small non-upscale non-boutique grocery store chains locally. But AJ’s is all about the gourmet quality with no mention of ethical standards. And they make Whole Paycheck look like the budget brand.
So what’s the alternative?
b&
Oh, the anti-Walmart forces are large and organized!
Yes, but they tend to be a different crowd from the anti-Whole-Paycheck one.
b&
It’s those darn randroids that give the rest of us libertarians a bad name.
To quote everyone’s favourite Paranoid Android, “It gives me a headache to think down to that level.”
John oliver on whole foods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9gGL1cnnhg
For comparison, CVS.com lists 186 homeopathic products, and Walmart has over 1000. So it’s not like Whole Foods has a monopoly on woo.
This is Capitalism, let the buyer beware, which means they don’t have to. Which is a bad way of operating for the buyers.
I get the joke — “Whole Paycheck”.
Sure they’re expensive, sure the have some pretty outlandish products — the John Oliver skit, though, isn’t talking about their fresh foods, vegetables, meat, fish, and cheese.
“Whole Paycheck” is a bit of a hyperbole. I agree that a minimum wage family may not be able to afford Whole Food prices, and that’s what’s regrettable.
But even the median US family, is what now, $76,000 per year? Say conservatively after taxes $52,000 per year — 10% of that is $100 per week for food, and I know that while a typical mid-income family of four may spend more than $100 a week at the grocery store, a lot of that is non-grocery — things like detergent, razor blades, beer or wine. But if you’re measuring just food — you can get the finest quality food at a place like Whole Foods, or here in Austin, Central Market, for well less than 10% of a median family take-home pay.
Food and shelter — the basics — and the food is well less than 10%. Why wouldn’t you go for the best for your family? There’s enough prosperity, still, in this country that if you’re complaining about the difference between, say, 8% and 12% of your budget for food, that you don’t really appreciate your blessings.
That’s a point I like to make in different contexts. Whole Paycheck is expensive by grocery store standards, but dirt cheap compared to restaurant food.
I spend about $100 / week there. I don’t even pretend to budget or look at prices. I’ll buy $10 / pound bacon, $insane / pound cheese, eggs from a place that the hens get the same sort of care my Mom gives her own hens, the works. Dinner tonight will be a $7 / pound Italian sausage, $5 / pound asparagus, and fresh pasta made from bulk semolina and one of those gold-plated eggs, tossed with whole cloves of garlic slowly sautéed in overpriced olive oil, topped with $20 / pound Parmesan cheese.
Works out to under $5 / meal. You’d be hard pressed to eat just the quantity of food I do at a fast food restaurant for $5 / meal — never mind the quality.
I could eat similarly by shopping at a cheaper grocery store…but, first there’s that whole ethical meat standards thing…and then there’s the question of why? It’s not like $5 / meal is any huge burden to my budget that I need to cut back on.
b&
That is a lot of money, you must feel very good about yourself.
Yes, it’s a fair amount of money. But it’s less than the typical cow-orkers I’ve worked with in office jobs in the past have typically spent on food. (Been years since I had an office job, it should be noted.)
These weren’t especially high-paying jobs. One in the marketing department at the newspaper…we’d go out to lunch at least a few times a week and spend $12 – $15 / person, lunch in the cafeteria was $7 – $8 / person. And I know many of them didn’t cook for their other meals, meaning they were spending at least twice as much on food as I do today. I was a temp, probably getting paid about $18 / hour for that particular gig.
As a percentage of income, my current food expenses are practically nothing compared with what I typically observe in others.
So, yes. I’m quite happy I can eat so luxuriously. But I’m still being comparatively quite frugal when I do so — and a great many of those who think Whole Paycheck is expensive could, in fact, save themselves a lot of money by shopping there rather than eat out.
Hell…you could do the proverbial 1/4 pound burger with fries for under $2 if you shop at Whole Paycheck and cook it yourself. I haven’t stepped in a McDonald’s in ages, but something tells me theirs is going to cost more than that — and taste like shit, to boot.
b&
I’m basically with you,Ben, on the money-is-no-object-when-it-comes-to-good-food, but I have found better produce and meat/fish at my local Longo’s and there is very little woo. Have also discovered some incredibly good meat from a localish farm which sells weekly at a farmers’ market near by daughter’s.
Be glad you’ve got better options! If there’re any here, I haven’t found them….
b&
People who know how to cook can eat great food at home at a low cost. I live in Australia, so I’m not familiar with ‘Whole Foods’. However I visit my local Farmers’ Market on Sundays and stock up on veggies and meat (and maybe tomorrow on lamb brains if a butcher there has managed to source them).
Can I eat at your house Ben?! 🙂
Sure — come on over!
b&
Why do the people who work at all-natural food places always look so sickly?
Not at the local Whole Paycheck. At least a few of them, male and female, could model for the local gym. None of them are noticeably underweight, and only one is overweight — and she’s not far from the American average, more rubenesque than corpulent. One guy’s something of a pencil-necked geek, but he’s also got some sort of palsy.
b&
Poor pencil-necked geek with palsy😟
Oh, he’s a good guy. I’m sure he’d rather not have whatever condition it is, but he manages just fine. Definitely not an object of pity. They clearly hired him because he does good work, not out of any sense of charity.
b&
Good to hear🐯
If it’s true that they are sickly, it might be that some people with health issues are attracted to health oriented lifestyles and venues and naturally they will end up working in those establishments.
“One guy’s something of a pencil-necked geek, but he’s also got some sort of palsy.”
People with cerebral palsy, dystonias, upper motor neuron injuries, and other neurological disorders often have to expend a lot of energy just to maintain balance and upright posture and to walk even short distances – abilities which most of us who don’t have neurological disorders (yet) simply take for granted. Might be difficult to look like something other than a “pencil-necked geek” if you’re coping with a movement disorder and spasticity.
Exactly what I figured. I’d probably be lucky to just make it out of bed in every morning with one of those neurological conditions, but he pretty clearly doesn’t let it slow him down.
b&
Actually one of the reasons I like our local natural food store (New Seasons) is that the employees get paid better. For the most part they are happier and healthier than those at a typical supermarket. Many of them have been there for years, which is also nice to see.
The other reasons I like the store include cheese, sprouted wheat bread, and coffee.
I must admit to being pretty stupid in the shopping department and particularly in the grocery stores. Only go there when something needed has run out or my wife is away. Just find what I am told to get and then depart.
Those check yourself out deals, I would not go near.
I think I’ve given up fighting a rearguard action on the meaning of ‘organic’, which I understand to mean ‘chemicals containing (chains of) carbon molecules’.
So far as I can see, any food sold for human consumption is inherently organic. Can’t think of any silicon-based life forms that would qualify. The only inorganic ‘foods’ I can think of are salt and a few medicinal minerals like magnesium carbonate. And water, of course. (Wonder if anyone’s selling ‘organic water’ yet?)
(I’ve just about given up on ‘chemicals’ too, but as a local expert chemist told our city council who were contemplating an ordinance banning ‘chemicals’ from landfills, ‘to a chemist, everything is a chemical’).
Still, I’ll leave the trendy to their quest for natural, organic foods containing no chemicals… (an empty set, I suspect)
cr
Dictionary.com gives 15 definitions for “organic”, only one of which is directly related to carbon chemistry. So the idea that the organic food industry has somehow hijacked the word is an urban myth; it’s always had multiple meanings.
Yeah BUT – the health-food industry is using it in a context which specifically relates to the ingredients of food – therefore by implication the chemicals of which that food is made. And I’m sure they like to trade on the ‘sciency’ echoes of the term.
The other meaning(s) that come to mind are ‘integral with the rest of the assembly/body/organism’, or ‘relating to (animal) organs’ – nether of which is particularly relevant to the current context.
So they’re misusing it, IMO.
cr
The “organic” in organic farming isn’t about the chemical constituents of the food; it’s about the biological origin of the pesticides and fertilizers used. Definition #2, not definition #1.
Okay, on that basis I guess I can just about accept it as a definition (though like most here I think the application of it is phony)
cr
Just because there previously existed multiple meanings for the word doesn’t mean that the industry didn’t hijack the word. They did. Prior to their need/desire to identify products grown without synthetic fertilizer (and whatever), this usage didn’t exist.
“Hijacking” is one way to describe a new, invented, usage.
The definition from Wikipedia:
Organic foods are foods produced by organic farming… organic farming in general features cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers are not allowed, although certain organically approved pesticides may be used under limited conditions. In general, organic foods are also not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or synthetic food additives.
Hmm… still not sure why they chose the word ‘organic’ but I’ll let that pass. On the whole their methods appear environmentally commendable (though with, I suppose, a certain unavoidable woo-ish component).
‘Chemical fertilizers’ not allowed – would that include those well-known chemical elements N-P-K? (found in most natural fertilisers, I think. The thing is that _every_ fertiliser is composed of chemicals. Cow-poo is nothing but chemicals. So is organic food, come to that.)
And – this is where the term gets potentially confusing – ‘organically approved pesticides’ – well for example DDT is most certainly an organic chemical though I suspect not ‘organically approved’.
cr
You say that “their methods appear environmentally commendable”. I do wonder about that, though. From what I’ve read (e.g. http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2014/5/5/organic-vs-conventional-crop-yields), it appears that organic farming’s crop yields are roughly 20-25% less than conventional farming. And that means 20-25% more habitat destruction to support that farmland. That’s hardly environmentally commendable.
First, of course, the real problem is gross overpopulation; we wouldn’t be having any of these discussions were the global human population numbered in the millions rather than billions.
But the 25% increased production from conventional techniques comes at a very significant environmental cost of its own. First, that’s just about equal to the energy of the oil used to make the fertilizers and pesticides; we are, essentially, in large part, eating not sunlight but oil. And that carries with it all sorts of pollution problems, plus the niggling little fact that we’ve not got enough oil left in the ground to keep this up much longer. Then there’s the topsoil erosion and dropping water tables from this intensive farming, and also…
…well, when you add it all up, yes, today we’re making more food with less land. But we’re also smashing up our heirloom furniture to make a bonfire in the middle of the living room in order to roast marshmallows.
b&
And don’t forget damage to bee populations. It’s suspected that the loss of honey bees is partly due to the stress of pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals in agriculture. Not to mention other insects, birds, and amphibians, which would probably be better off with less intensive forms of agriculture.
Yes. There’s a fundamental dichotomy…by definition, anything save the actual crop that’s been planted is a pest. When the fields are small and the farmers tolerate less than 100% “productivity,” that’s not such a problem. But today’s agribusiness has grown to the point that we’re now faced with choosing between a 5% increase in shareholder profits and the extinction of Monarch butterflies.
b&
“Chemical” in these contexts almost always is synonymous with “petrochemical derivative.” Even though I doubt most who use the word that way realize that that’s what they’re doing.
b&
The use of terms in popular lingo is pretty frustrating as soon as you want to add any precision to the discussion.
Does DDT appear in nature? Not human created?
They are thinking of how crops were produced before industrialization. However the would include fixed nitrogen that appeared in the 1920’s too.
Read this former employees expose of the ” faux hippy Wal-Mart ” : http://gawker.com/5824287/read-a-disgruntled-whole-foods-employees-epic-resignation-letter
Worth reading, thanks.
Whole Foods rap!
Organic food screams contrarianism, rather than any informed choice about food. Yet organic has developed a halo for meaning healthy, as if somehow it’s healthy (or at the least, healthier) to eat an organic apple versus one that’s conventionally grown. It seems organic is the label that embodies being against all ills that are wrong with the modern food industry, irrespective of how true it is.
Though I’ve found in general, people obsess way too much over food. We’ve gone from a point where most of us struggled to get enough food to survive, to a situation where the caloric density and nutritional density determine whether we ought to get them. There’s plenty of bullshit around what foods we eat, what foods we shouldn’t, and what awful awful choices other people make. And in that respect, organic is just branch of the tree of bullshit that is modern eating.
May I say – YES!!!
It’s amazing how people who (in NZ) would never ask about or comment on my religion/lack of, or politics, feel almost obliged to make some comment about what I’m eating.
cr
The sad thing about it at all is there’s so much misinformation out there about food, that those judgements are so often misguided.
Actually I suspect the organic movement got started back in the 60s, when Rachael Carson’s book Silent Spring was making an impact. DDT was sprayed on fruit trees and other farm produce and the use of chemical fertilizers was increasing.
People were sensitized and the organic folks were suggesting you could grow food better without chemicals. It’s a pretty innocent beginning. I think once it became a brand and a movement it began to take on more for itself than it could handle.
Perhaps that explains why there is a halo around the food, because my generation (Gen Y) certainly have adopted the assumption that organic is one of those things you do for health reasons, rather than anything related to the actual science of the matter.
Well said!
The biggest thing the “Left” and “Right” have in common is self-righteousness. Perhaps the most prominent pimple is “political correctness.”
Reconcile, reconcile, RECONCILE!
The whole self-righteous aspect to political correctness (political correctness? You mean treating people with respect? – a meme on my facebook feed the other day) makes me want to hand in my leftist membership card.
Though there is one other thing the self-righteous left and right have in common – that certain speech is beyond the pale and needs to be exorcised from society. Thankfully the speech both want to censor is each other’s, so the freedom to freely speak one’s mind is somewhat protected while both sides fight it out for the power to censor speech.
The self righteousness aspect of the Anti- PCers outshouts whatever “self righteousness” you think those who wish to be cordial not nasty. Lets go back to calling a nigger a nigger, right? Pre PC of modern times. That is what you want. Everyone to grow thick skins and carry guns so we can fix it the old fashioned way? That is what you want.
Censoring epithets isn’t stopping free speech.
We can stop it if it is carried too far. But just flushing it is flushing that “baby” down with it.
“you think those who wish to be cordial not nasty”
Firstly, I would think that nasty speech has it’s place. Are you not nasty in response to racism? Are you not nasty in response to intolerance? Secondly, policing speech is not going to change attitudes. It just means at best certain words or phrases are removed from language, and we see that other words take their place.
“Lets go back to calling a nigger a nigger, right?”
And this is what I don’t get about the PC-brigade. Any complaints about the extent to which political correctness attempts to change language in response to the normative attitudes tied to words, then it’s apparently assholes wanting to use racist language.
If it was just about the n-word, I’d be more sympathetic to the cause of political correctness (even then, to what extent? Should the word be banned? Should it be excised from history?). But political correctness goes far beyond that, because there are always differential normative attitudes that get embodied in speech.
“Censoring epithets isn’t stopping free speech.”
Actually it is, but the question is whether certain speech ought to be stopped. Pretending it’s not a speech issue is a gross abuse of language, and not one that serves the cause of having an open tolerant society.
“We can stop it if it is carried too far.”
But when someone says ‘it’s going to far’, the response is “Lets go back to calling a nigger a nigger, right? That is what you want.”
That is their point. However Political Correctness is actually political not civil.
Originally it was said to those who liked the racisms and sexism where it was and to keep it that way. Then the Reich Wing took it and inverted it to where if you spoke against those who worked hard to over turn that racism and sexism were against free speech. It has many more convolutions and PC is used in ways that it wasn’t meant to be. Like cordiality.
There are many other “N words” than just that one. Many. Which is why I am ambivalent since I see benefits from both attitudes, and problems from them.
Not something cut-and-dried as some would think.
“There are many other “N words” than just that one.”
Duh. But in the context, surely you can work out which one is meant. Like when watching a censored movie, you can tell which word is being censored from the context.
“and PC is used in ways that it wasn’t meant to be”
Yet when I speak out on that, I’m told what I want is to “go back to calling a nigger a nigger”. I can personally be sympathetic to the aims of what political correctness was trying to achieve while thinking its implementation disastrous and ineffective. I can also think that some proponents are prone to self-righteous outrage, which is true of any moral-based belief. Why should proponents of political correctness be exempt from that?
Sedona, AZ – Read. My. maps: No vor-texes!
If you gave someone a cow & they ate it that would be pretty dim or they would be desperate – better that they milked it if there were decent pasture, & gave the milk to their children.
Kewpie-doll for desperate!
I like your Astro boy icon.
Can you hear what he hears?
Why can I see General Jack D. Ripper shopping at Whole Foods?
“our precious bodily fluids”!
Those who work in 24-hour supermarkets are familiar with the 3am regulars who want their items’ barcodes entered manually, so they don’t get Electro Cooties from the Menacing Laser Beams in the scanners. It is *not* uncommon, or confined to Whole Paycheck. They come in the dark of the night, one presumes, from the social pressure of trying this lunacy with a daytime crowd lined up behind them.
Sadly, and not at all related, is another category of 3 am shopper: disfigured people are disproportionally more likely to buy groceries then.
As George Takei would say, “Oh, my!”
That first comment reminds me of a joke: how can you tell if someone is a vegan?
Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Second comment, rather. Serves me right for not scrolling all the way back up.
Good one!
Ain’t no cure for stupid.
True. That I know of anyway.
Ignorance is not knowing.
Stupid is not learning.
Only one can be cured. We desperately need it for the other since it is throughout our species.
We have 46 states, one District (D.C.) and four commonwealths.
If you’re going to include D.C., you should also include the many other territories and the like under US jurisdiction but lacking representation — with Puerto Rico being the most obvious example.
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They may call themselves “commonwealths” but they are still only states and there are 50.