What Level of Atrocity Must Whole Foods Commit Before I Stop Shopping There?

JUNE 2015:

“Whole Foods in Legal Trouble for Inflating Prices (Again),” New York Observer.

JULY 2015:

“Prison to Table: The Other Side of the Whole Foods Experience,” Dissent.

AUGUST 2015:

My internal dialogue begins…

What if Whole Foods was charged with maligning immigrants?

So not cool. So, have you tasted those New York strips? I mean the ones that are really thick. Like how phone books used to be.

What if they insulted POWs for being weak?

Just disgraceful… you know, even better are those T-bones. People in the know call them “Porterhouses.”

If they trafficked foreign women to forage for morels?

With filet mignon on one side of the bone. Really lean. A Weight Watchers Power Food™ even.

If they held a bake sale for Hezbollah?

And New York Strip on the other. The meat stays moist because of the bone. That’s the secret.

What if they donated 10 cents for every bag you used to the Klan?

Sometimes we just buy the filet and wrap that really good thick-cut kind of bacon around it and sear it in a cast-iron skillet.

…Or to Jews for Jesus?

That’s when the weather isn’t good enough to grill outside.

What if they tried to sell a senate seat in exchange for lucrative government contracts?

Those steaks are what I call “golden.”

What if they served Quaaludes in the faro salad to help promote non-consensual sex?

That is absurd. Rapists don’t like faro.

What if the guy giving $1-per-minute massages in café area was a registered sex offender in six states?

The strawberries at the Jewel taste like, frankly, straw.

Or if free-market libertarian Whole Foods CEO John Mackey gave out copies of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with every bottle of kefir purchased.

[Pause]

Or if they sold comfort food made of comfort women?

You know, no one, when really hungry, says, “You know, I am craving some food made by Unilever.” I actually have a fantasy of eating only “our story” foods. “Our story” foods are those that have a header on the back of their package saying, OUR STORY . And then text underneath recounts a homespun narrative of how these/this best friends/married couple decided there had to be a more authentic cereal/chip/yogurt, and so they started this company on their Vermont/California/Wisconsin farm.

What if they offered rotisserie abortions?

All hearsay.

What if they went vegetarian?

Please do not make me go back to the Jewel. I will do anything not to go back to the Jewel. One has to practically get on ones’s knees and beg them to open a new lane. Plus, I bought prosciutto there once — and it tasted like salami.

What if Whole Foods cut labor costs — and only had one check-out lane?

Not even Trader Joe’s. Have you tried their hamburger? Ground into a paste. Not crumbly.

What if Whole Foods based their business model on co-opting progressive causes like organic and sustainable foods — only to then crush labor unions — as they catered to the every whim of the entitled upper-middle-hegemonic textured-food-worshiping bobo class?

You expect me to get up in time for the good stuff at the farmer’s market? Besides, I think I read somewhere that Michael Pollan said that it’s OK to shop there as long as it’s after 6 PM.