All I wanted was a peach

After all of the reading we had been doing recently for our FYS, I was skeptical about just how “whole” Whole Foods would actually be. While the fruits were for the most part imported from California or from out of state, the ethics that went into all of the foods sold at Whole Foods were a pleasing contrast to some of the twisted ethics that Michael Pollan portrays in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Between the many rankings that the meat department employed and the wealth of knowledge that the employees were so willing to share, I felt that Whole Foods had worked very hard to develop a way for people to both buy and come to understand their food.

The openness of the many departments was what impressed me most, such as the way the meat butchers could identify each of the cuts, and where the meat of that cut had come from. That kind of transparency reminded me of Joel Salatin, and his belief that the food industry, in an ideal world, would be without walls, letting the customers peek behind the curtain, which is what our tour at Whole Foods let us do.