All posts tagged "Whole Foods"

Well, that turned in to quite the thread. I think that one of the reasons that threads about the food and health problems in our country blow up, here and elsewhere, is that the situation is pretty complicated and it's easy for people to stake out something they've observed about the problem and assume that all other observations are wrong. This is especially true when there's legitimate conflicts, where it seems if A is true, B can't be true. I thought I'd toss together some thoughts on how this has all gone down.

[rebelmouse-image 24749429 original_size="680x510" expand=1]Jamelle Bouie, who is kicking ass guest-blogging for Matt Y., posted yesterday about a remarkable study done at the University of Washington that showed that obesity was 10 times higher among the customers are a low-end supermarket than the ones at the high end Whole Foods. To put that in perspective---4% of Whole Foods shoppers were obese, and nearly 40% of the customers at the inexpensive Albertson's were. As Jamelle pointed out, in no way does this mean that shopping at Whole Foods will make you skinny, but it's actually more of a correlation, not causation thing---where you shop is indicative of your class/income, and it's your class/income that has a tremendous impact on your diet and exercise.

The CEO of Whole Foods has a plan to reform health care. Not by increasing communist-style government control of healthcare OMGWTFBBQ, but instead by taking simple, common sense steps. Mainly, having every retailer on Earth become Whole Foods.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/v/gZez_k4vAzU&hl=en&fs=1 expand=1]Courtney has posted a "day in the life of a feminist" post to give the world an idea of what being a feminist looks like on the micro level. I thought this was a valuable public service, so I thought I'd do the same thing here. So here's a typical day in the life of this feminist.

Well, not intentionally, but there is a reason to think that anti-vaccination ideologists could hurt women more than men, amongst other damage that they can do. I finally had a chance to listen to a recent "This American Life" that dealt with, amongst other things, an outbreak of the measles in San Diego that was caused by parents refusing to vaccinate their kids because they've been fed and believe the misinformation about how dangerous vaccines are. The show is sympathetic to the parents who are caught up in this panic, since obviously they're the same Whole Foods-shopping, over-anxious yuppies that make up the audience and staff of "This American Life". The reporter understands how you want to control everything your kid eats or is exposed to, and how obsessed some parents get with the concept of purity in their kids' input. (Which really is completely understandable, since you are what you eat.) Though I do have to wonder why the same people who refuse to trust the FDA, the CDC, the AMA, their own doctors, a multitude of scientists, and the entire medical community when it comes to vaccines happily trust a cardboard box at Whole Foods that says that the item inside is organic. If the FDA won't or can't control vaccine safety, then why on earth would they be able to ensure that organic food really is organic? There's a darkly funny moment on the show when the initial quarantine announcements warned people who shopped at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's that they were in the greatest danger of exposure.