Posted on 02/24/2014 7:41:56 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Americans get riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but lap up the quasi-religious snake oil at Whole Foods. It’s all pseudoscience—so why are some kinds of pseudoscience more equal than others?
If you want to write about spiritually-motivated pseudoscience in America, you head to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. It’s like a Law of Journalism. The museum has inspired hundreds of book chapters and articles (some of them, admittedly, mine) since it opened up in 2007. The place is like media magnet. And our nation’s liberal, coastal journalists are so many piles of iron fillings.
But you don’t have to schlep all the way to Kentucky in order to visit America’s greatest shrine to pseudoscience. In fact, that shrine is a 15-minute trip away from most American urbanites.
I’m talking, of course, about Whole Foods Market. From the probiotics aisle to the vaguely ridiculous Organic Integrity outreach effort (more on that later), Whole Foods has all the ingredients necessary to give Richard Dawkins nightmares. And if you want a sense of how weird, and how fraught, the relationship between science, politics, and commerce is in our modern world, then there’s really no better place to go. Because anti-science isn’t just a religious, conservative phenomenon—and the way in which it crosses cultural lines can tell us a lot about why places like the Creation Museum inspire so much rage, while places like Whole Foods don’t.
My own local Whole Foods is just a block away from the campus of Duke University. Like almost everything else near downtown Durham, N.C., it’s visited by a predominantly liberal clientele that skews academic, with more science PhDs per capita than a Mensa convention.
Still, there’s a lot in your average Whole Foods that’s resolutely pseudoscientific. The homeopathy section has plenty of Latin words and mathematical terms, but many of its remedies are so diluted that, statistically speaking, they may not contain a single molecule of the substance they purport to deliver. The book section—yep, Whole Foods sells books—boasts many M.D.’s among its authors, along with titles like The Coconut Oil Miracle and Herbal Medicine, Healing, and Cancer, which was written by a theologian and based on what the author calls the Eclectic Triphasic Medical System.
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Wait until you take a gander at “enviro-kids” cereal and the indoctrinating verbiage on the box. Talk about instilling guilt in the kiddies at a very young impressionable age. I consider it a form of child abuse. (I think it’s enviro-kids cereal or some other noxiously titled breakfast food.) My with talked me into going in one ONCE. Neither of us will ever set foot in one again.
If I were to show this to my wife, she would probably go out the door and never look back.
It is a religion.
Its pricey too.
Coconut oil - great stuff. Foods not drenched in pesticides, herbicides and petrochemicals - great stuff. Probiotics - great stuff.
These days you can buy this kind of stuff in most local grocery stores.
It ain’t called Whole Paycheck for nothin’.
Sounds like we’re ginning up support for the food industry.
Who needs dat stinkin’ healtha food.
I gots me ma kraft mac an chess from da box.
Just an anecdotal observation
When I lived in Austin many years ago I was then as now a bicycle commuter. The people who regularly ran me off the road always generally the ones with a “Whole Foods” or “Save the Earth” bumper sticker. I have always had far less trouble with red-necks than environmentalist types
After Katrina all of my suspicuons re. `organic` foods were confirmed. A close friend had an uncle who lost 3/4 of his citrus farm to floodwaters in Placquemine parish. He was trying to replant what land was left when he was approached by some government types to turn his farm `organic`. He said he couldn`t afford to raise anything that way and hope to make enough money_no chemicals,regulations etc. They explained he didn`t have to PROVE he was growing organically-no one would inspect- he just had to pay a yearly fee for the organic label. He said no. Don`t know if it was state or federal people but if that`s how it works the people paying exorbitant $ for `healthy` are gullible morons.
The name “Whole Foods Market” always puzzled me. Since there’s a whole foods market then there should also be a half foods market and a quarter foods market.
Some Whole Foods staff are really knowledgable though. One cured my gout by telling me about black currant juice. And my cousin’s gerd was relieved with ginger pills a WF staffer told him about. I’m all for avoiding big pharma.
If something is labeled “organic” I do not buy it. Why pay double for something which might have been grown on questionable soil.
There’s an interesting ideological wraparound effect though. Liberals embrace the Whole Foods ethos as an extension of their anti-corporate paranoia, and some conservatives do the same out of fear of the NWO and Monsanto which are out to steal their vital essences.
That is true. The staff in the supplement department do know their stuff and they get regular ongoing training.
I love Whole Foods! You can buy good beer and cheese and watch yuppies buy strange foods made out of wood chips.
I go to Whole Foods often because they have good food. No, I don't buy the $10 Swiss chocolate bars with Kumquat and Dragon Fruit in them. I don't buy the cheese that smells like an old shoe and sells for $15 a pound. I bypass all the non-food aisles with their silly books on global warming, their clothing made out of hemp and their overpriced toothpaste and shampoos. And I especially don't bother with the "bring your own bag" nonsense. I ask for paper and make them double-bag.
But walk the perimeter of the store and you get some very good produce, fish, meat, dairy products and nuts at very reasonable prices. I especially like the section where you can grind up fresh peanut butter. Though I do get a kick out of the label that says "this product may contain traces of nuts."
Yes, much of the clientele are scowling liberals who are in between a trip to the gym and a lecture on the plight of the Kurds. But at least they aren't paying with food stamps because Whole Foods only puts their stores in high-income areas. I also love parking my Ford F150 into a spot that is reserved for "fuel efficient" cars. That will sometimes earn me a mean stare. Hey, my 8-cylinder truck is pretty efficient at burning fuel - my frequent fill-ups attest to that.
I’m glad you were able to get someone to help “fix” your gout. Painful stuff.
Blah, Blah, Blah, say all you want, but their stock is fantastic. So buy it and get rich off the stupid enviro-loonies.
I happen to love Whole Foods, the produce section is great (loved the dates rolled in walnuts, which is my afternoon snack), DH loves the beer section, lots of local micro brews and the beer is rated. I also buy artichoke hearts in olive oil for our after work happy hour snacking.
I also like going to a store where everyone BUT ME in line is using an EBT card — while driving a late model car and talking on the latest iPhone.
Yes, I may pay more when I go to Whole Foods occasionally, but I leave w/o my blood boiling from seeing all the EBT cards (this is California, where 33% of ALL welfare recipients live).
Should read, I also dislike...
Sometimes I wish FReep had an edit function like Disqus.
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