We all know that New York prices are astronomical to say the least. There are not too many places that have a higher cost of living than this fair city. The fact that most New Yorkers also have no idea what stuff actually costs in the real world doesn’t help matters.
I mean people walk into stores here and buy a banana for a dollar. If that doesn’t point to a warped sense of reality when it comes to the value of a dollar, I don’t know what does. As expensive as this city is though, there seems to be one place in particular that offends my senses more than any other.
Whole Foods, or Whole Paycheck as I have affectionately come to know it. I’ve tried to figure it out, but I just don’t get what criteria they are using to determine the price points on items in their store. Ignorance would seem the most logical answer but I’m just not sure. Listen, I don’t care what remote mountain range in the world the goat came from; unless that block of cheese has gold flakes in it, I should not have to pay ten dollars for it.
Not that you asked, but you know what else I don’t care about? I don’t care that it’s organic. By now we all know that organic does not necessarily equal healthy.
That aside, if stores like Whole Foods are so concerned about us eating healthy, maybe they could consider actually making healthier food cheaper and stuff that’s bad for you expensive.
It’s bad enough that healthy food usually tastes disgusting compared to stuff that’s bad for you, which is always delicious, but then to make it so much more expensive truly is an example of kicking a man when he is down.
So I had already sworn that I would never shop at Whole Foods again, but on this most recent occasion, I didn’t really have a choice. I was hungry and it was convenient so it was going to have to do. As I was perusing the aisles looking for something to eat, I couldn’t understand how people kept walking around this place as if what was going on here was normal.
Each item I picked up just filled me with more disbelief than the last one and I would look around me like, “Is anyone else actually seeing what’s going on here?” But people just kept on taking stuff off the shelves and throwing them in their baskets like this was perfectly normal. I thought to myself, “I could buy like 12 Big Macs from McDonald’s for about the same price as a salad in here.” So that’s pretty much what I did. I still haven’t recovered from that…
While I’m not much of conspiracy theorist, I do have one when it comes to Whole Foods. I think Whole Foods is actually an elaborate social experiment being conducted by some non-governmental agency or research university somewhere in Europe. They are streaming the footage from every Whole Foods back to these organizations where they are studying how these “crazy Americans” can be coerced into paying any price simply by sticking an organic label and fancy European name on what is essentially a bag of Doritos.
There is probably someone in Geneva writing a dissertation on that very subject as we speak. Either that or Whole Foods is just one extended episode of Punk’d and Ashton Kutcher is just waiting for the right moment to run out of the frozen produce section and tell us we’ve been Punk’d!
Either way the joke is definitely on us.
Featured Image Kari Sullivan by on Flickr
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
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Shelly Cone
October 10, 2012 at 5:14 pm
But I like Whole Foods! Yes, they are terribly expensive though. I could never buy my regular grocery staples there. Just the occasional splurge.