Modern Organic Chemistry

I found where all those “organic” ingredients go, once they are concocted together into various gourmet blends resembling restaurant dining fare. I say resembling, because packaged food at the grocery has to meet a lot of standards for shelf life and storage that don’t apply to a restaurant kitchen.  Think of salad dressing. In a restaurant it is made right before your salad is served, or it would separate into layers in minutes. Not so those plastic “dressing on the side” cartons that come with a grocery store salad to go. They keep for days, which means an emulsifying agent, a soap-like chemical that dissolves oil in water, was added.  (A book about the physical chemistry of food called A Cookbook Decoder by Arthur Grosser is a very helpful and entertaining read for those with no college chemistry, or who slept through theirs. He explains how mayonnaise and Hollandaise work, as well as why boiled eggs turn green.) Of course if these artificial chemicals are extracted from organically grown plants, by a transmogrification of USDA rules they become organic products themselves, and may be legally included.

 

To get back to the original topic, I searched for processed organic prepared food in my grocery (Lucky’s) as well as a similar chain (Rally’s) and a Safeway. All these big chain stores have lots of organic produce (Lucky’s organic section is larger than the standard section, and a lot of products are only carried as organic, like the bean sprouts and salad greens), but I found very few examples of canned or frozen organic products, and no boxes of organic snack treats, cereals, etc. (In fact a total absence of canned organic vegetables says a lot about the demographics of organic shoppers, but another time…) I did find a couple of organic spaghetti sauces mixed right in with Barilla and Prego, which seems like a reasonable alternative, given organic tomatoes are supposed to be better. One of the brands was the same price as the premium Barilla and Newman brands, which surprised me, but it didn’t look as good. I’ll let you know.

 

So where are all these organic prepared food products hiding? I figured I’d check out a store catering to up-market shoppers interested in gourmet specialty services and convenience shopping. That’s right, Whole Foods is where it’s at. This (my first time, and I’m still in awe) is a temple dedicated to fine eating, and offering all the rare and exotic ingredients needed to make that special moveable feast. Whole Foods is about half restaurant/delicatessen for eating in or to go, and half specialty gourmet products store.  Surprisingly little of what they sell is what your grandmother would think of as groceries, but if you need powdered sand flies from  Sri Lanka to complete that special curry from the travel magazine, this place will have it.  And it is replete with floor to ceiling shelves of microwaveable pre-packaged dishes, duly sealed in plastic like military ration packs and kept refrigerated or frozen. About half of this stuff claims to be organic, or natural or in some way healthier than regular food.  A very large pastry shop advertises all goods baked on the premises are organic.  Yes, even the cheesecake, 500 calorie zucchini muffins, Valentine’s Day cupcakes, and egg and ham croissants are organic. More telling, the lactose free and soy substituted variations are still supposed to be organic – organic cheesecake with no dairy products – rriiigghht.

 

If you wonder whether I’m poking fun at this yuppie institution, the answer is “maybe a little”. Whole Foods knows my demographic, the Frazier/Niles wealthy baby boomer, and it lures us in like dog pheromones. I’m not immune, and I was very glad I hadn’t brought a credit card, just a notebook. It’s a farmer’s market bazaar at a world’s fair, but with a planet sized environmental footprint to match, and the emperor is missing a few other garments as well. There is way too much emphasis on letting Whole Foods do the cooking, and the prices, starting with the $9 premixed salads, single serving with 300 calories, are beyond restaurant outrage. They choose to put very odd weights in their packages (e.g. 12 ½ oz) to discourage price comparisons, and prices vary from slightly higher for vastly superior goods, to outlandishly higher for the same goods, which are displayed with more attention to detail than a cruise ship buffet line. You really feel like you are shopping in a restaurant (or Candyland or Willy Wanka’s). But they still have a lot of great stuff, especially specialty meats and exotic fresh produce. We just need someone to drive the money changers from the temple.

 

Warning - this is the market place where Joel Salatin meets Wall Street, and it is an uneasy partnership. 

 

 

Comments

[greensgal]

My favorite trick of Whole Foods is to "leave out" price labels in the produce department, hoping we will head to the cashier with our precious eggplant in hand only to find out that it is $6 a pound. It is most interesting that the signs are missing on the most expensive produce. In the Silver Spring Whole Foods, the produce guys just throw up their hands and say "they understand our frustration." i.e. they are being told to do it that way. I call that consumer deception.

[Napanite]

There is a definite intention to deceive, and it goes beyond the invisible pricing, which I noticed as well. The place has no clear boundaries between grocery and restaurant, and an attempt is made to lure you into spending the bulk of your bucks on processing. Whichever way you walk, groceries start turning into more elaborate fare, and the stuff is so interesting, it’s like browsing a restaurant menu. You just get sucked in. The nutritional labeling required on processed groceries isn’t required on restaurant items, which adds to the confusion.

Since writing this, I have become aware of a “Whole Foods hate movement” involving people who say the stores started out to be an organic food co-op with high standards and low prices, and that they “sold out” to someone. Bashing them gives you instant readers. I don’t have an opinion, because I just heard of them, but what they are now is beautiful in some ways, like a Club Med for food, but it’s just very commercial. There was no locally grown stuff; in fact the emphasis was on “looting the world to bring you the best”. The store in Napa is situated between Peet’s Coffee (an upscale and snootier Starbuck’s) and Trader Joe, which is more of the same.

I suppose people who don’t cook have a right to get processed organic food if they want it. Whatever “organic” chemicals get added back, the product would still be pesticide and antibiotic free. You could make the same argument for the strained baby food or the frozen pizza. It’s just that this type of organic offering, you just know, is going to skirt the regulations to the limit, like Pollan’s “free range” chicken coop, with an unlocked door that the chickens are conditioned to avoid. Personally, I’m not sure which would be better if you had to choose, doing your own cooking with typical grocery store produce, which is what I largely do, or eating processed, precooked organic food made by a huge conglomerate expert in ducking all the rules.