But, but...THE HARVARD STUDY!!!

All of the higher end grocery and convenience stores catering to the food as identity crowd and whatever the current "nutrition" fad is. Coconut Water, Gluten Free(for non celiacs), Goji, Chia, etc etc. At NS I saw this stuff called Blk water which looks like compost tea and whose nutritional claims are similar to the scam pyramid scheme kanji water.

The main difference between WF and NS is NS will sell Coke type products under the guise of "not being the food police" as opposed to "there is a shitton of profit to be made off of soda pop".

I recommend(if you're into that thing) shopping the organic(same suppliers as WF and NS) and natural sections at Fred's. You can also get reasonably priced toilet paper, condoms, and real feminine hygiene products there. Oh, and the Hollywood one has an AWESOME wine selection. And 4 beers on their growler station!

I guess I'm curious about how these products are any different from anti-aging facial moisturizers, whitening toothpastes, antibacterial soaps, diet sodas, weight loss supplements and other snake oils found in any Safeway or Walgreens.

Is it because these products are more widely believed to be effective, despite the same lack of scientific support for that perceived effectiveness? Or is it because the companies that make those products have wider distribution, bigger margins and a greater financial ability to obscure the pseudoscientific realities of things like triclosan being an antibacterial?

People will buy a lot of bullshit to make themselves feel better, but Whole Foods is microscopic in the national market for pseudoscientific panacea-driven consumerism.

@Drunk & Write, one major difference is usually the crap at Safeway and Walgreens has chemicals in it, often petroleum-based.

New Seasons is probably my 3rd-4th most common grocery store (after Fred Meyer and Trader Joe's, and arguably Kruger's)

While New Seasons has all the same woo-woo stuff, and could very well be pushing pseudoscience, my take on them is more that I'll get some good samples, and have a lot more options of stuff like nondairy yogurt or tempeh, stuff that you won't find at Safeway, but isn't exactly "superfoods" mumbo-jumbo, either.

What's sad about WH is that it started as a grocery store that offered fresh, healthy foods without the hippie BS and now it's pretty much balls-deep in it.

What's considered healthy or trendy in health foods changes every few years. You really expect a grocery store to miss the boat on this? Everything medicine tells us is healthy becomes unhealthy years later. I don't know what hasn't been linked to cancer. Besides which, doctors think that three drinks in an evening constitutes "binge drinking." If people want to think gluten is bad and eat overpriced bread made with sawdust, is this not their right under America and free enterprise?

And when did creationism become the opposite of evolution? Some people can see how the two might coexist, like Clarence Darrow for instance.

@Paul Cone: Everything is made of chemicals.

@Graham: Yeah, just look at the atmosphere. It's already filled with CO2! And CO2 is natural. A little more can't hurt.

The difference between whole foods and every other grocery company is that they are bringing awareness of what we put in our bodies and what impact our products can have on the environment and world as a whole. Non-GMO project: this is not a gimmick, rather it is informing the customer whether they are purchasing something made naturally or it is genetically altered in some way. Whole foods does carry products containing GMOs. They have never claimed for it not to be the case, but by 2018, the entire company will have full transparency on every item that they carry on whether or not it contains them. This is something that the consumer deserves to know and they are pioneering full disclosure on this worldly hot topic. Why wait until 2018 to do so? There are literally thousands of products within the store and it is a time consuming process to have the appropriate verifications to be put into place. Many are added day in and day out. Standing behind their private label, all food based products with the 365 logo on them are non-GMO already. This includes the cans of beans that are only $.89 or the $.99 spaghetti.

Moving onto another mission project would be Eco scale. Eco scale measures the impact on the environment that chemicals and cleaning products they carry. This again is bringing awareness to the consumer about what their money is going to and how it is directly impacting the world around us.

Although different diets won't be suitable for everyone, the attempt to provide the best information available to the consumer is the goal; whether it be paleo, engine 2, or veganism, etc, they will have the information and the supplies to help you out. I don't think that Mackey sits around and dreams up these things to make people fall for false advertising... Dr. Oz that's another story.

So, have your opinion and run with it, but please educate yourself on topics before drawing to conclusions against a company that is promoting the well being of the consumer and the world as a whole.

-Dave G.

The Food and Drug Administration, World Health Organization, and the American Medical Association have all agreed GMO's are safe.
While I believe in labeling on principle, it will hurt your local farmers and grocers selling perfectly safe foods for awhile -- untill the public becomes more educated and doesn't believe this anti-GMO hype.

Isn't it nice how Monsanto will only allow for 90 day safety trials of their product in the US?

And isn't it interesting that when other countries conduct long term safety trials on Monsanto products they find find alarming health complications?

For instance, take the 2012 French study that was published in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology in 2012, that found rats fed on Roundup Ready corn developed tumors, liver problems and early death.

Despite what the critics of the French study claim, the first major one being Science Media Centre, a supposedly neutral party who just happens to be funded by bodies like CropLife International, Syngenta, and Monsanto UK, the study's methodology was sound:

It followed 200 rats over two years, divided into 10 groups of 10 males and 10 females. Three groups were fed the NK603 corn alone, three groups were fed the corn treated with Roundup herbicide, three groups were not fed the corn but their water was treated with Roundup, and a control group was fed non-GM corn and plain drinking water. The researchers found that the rats that consumed the GM corn or the Roundup, separately or combined, were prone to serious health problems that typically did not manifest until the fourth month of the trial. Industry-sponsored rat feeding tests only span three months.

So a two year study does not get the EFSA's stamp of approval, but a similar study of much shorter duration, 90 days, is what got Monsanto's NK 603 Roundup tolerant GMO maize and Roundup herbicide approved by the EFSA in the first place? Interesting ...

But in the end the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology bowed to the biotech backlash and retracted the study, even though it violated the journal’s own express principles and guidelines for such retractions.
That's what happens when your science isn't favorable to a company like Monsanto.

Ahhh. Erik Henriksen. Your articles are such a refreshing dose of rational thinking this otherwise woo-ridden city. Thank you for being a voice of reason amidst all the hysterical, paranoid shrieking. I had stopped reading the Mercury regularly, but your posts have drawn me back. Please keep up the good work.

Basic, universal items are, on average, .70 cents more at Whole Foods. The place is a rat's nest for people who like paying for image.

New Seasons is a bit spendy, too, but the real problem is the employees who are too busy being 'the friendliest in town' to remember basic things like bagging all your items or giving correct cash back.

@ steps:

"Basic, universal items are, on average, .70 cents more at Whole Foods."

I'm going to have to be that one nitpicky dude; sorry that I'm not sorry. First: I'm assuming that you meant 70 cents ($0.70) and not seven-tenths of a cent (.70 cents). Second: 70 cents more than who?

I see that you threw "on average" in there, but that's still a pretty specific number you cited. Are you sure you didn't just pull it out of your ass? I agree that they are generally more expensive than most other grocery stores, but your number seems a bit large and convenient -- have you a source you want to share? And, considering that Whole Foods carries plenty of items that aren't available elsewhere, how do those products factor into your number?

Anyway, Grocery Outlet or GTFO.

Kind of off-topic: To their credit, Whole Foods accepts a lot of recyclables that generally aren't accepted elsewhere -- on average, about 70% (.70) more...

Science!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/monsanto-…