My partner and I took our first trip to Whole Foods in West Vancouver on Saturday...now I know why some people call it 'Whole Paycheque'. We spent a hour doing cost-comparisons with our regular shopping choice, a BC-owned organic food market called Choices, and at the end of the comparison the score was:

1 item was cheaper at Whole Foods

99 items on our grocery list were cheaper at Choices

3 items were the same price, give or take a dime

I will say this for Whole Foods - they carry Sigg water bottles, which I haven't seen anywhere else in town, so I know we're going back there to get those sometime soon. Aside from that, I was flabbergasted at the prices on most of the items in there. If this place is supposed to be the 'gateway drug' into eco-living, there will most likely be an amazing amount of people running screaming in the opposite direction.

whole food has pros and cons. we have also done the comparison shopping. here in chicago, we have found wf is cheaper than dominicks with quite a few things. yes, they are expensive, but they offer a wide variety of produce and herbs that the other grocery stores do. that is a good thing for someone who likes to make food from scratch. it must cost them a bit to keep the variety they do. of course, my man noticed recently that they do not recycle. so, people eat the food they purchased to eat for a lunch in the store and toss there plastic, paper, and aluminum...in the garbage. boo.

Anyone who thinks Whole Foods is really a honest "green" alternative to conventional agriculture needs to read Michael Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Once you combine the effects of mega-sized organic farming structure and interstate trucking, those organic veggies we're buying at Whole Foods really aren't much better than conventional in terms of energy and land usage. Where Whole Foods has really succeeded is in marketing.

I was wondering what the Vinegar Primer was about. Hadn't gotten that far in my issue of Fl@vors yet. Thanks for the tippo.

This sounds like a potentially tasty pickling substance:
"In Great Britain, distilled vinegar is, interestingly enough, a different product entirely, made from unhopped beer and then distilled to intensify the acetic acid."

The green choice for veggies is still your local farmers market or growers coop.

I'm afriad that whole foods will have a *home depot* effect on communities by putting all small heal food stores and green markets out of business. Remember when every main street had it's own hardware store?

Here in Madison, WF (or as I call it The Death Star) placed its first store one block down from the locally-owned natural foods store I was working at. The week prior to WF opening, we did our craziest week of sales. The week they opened? About 1/3 the total of that previous week.
Was it coincidence or chance they chose the location? No way! They saw an existing consumer base and poached it.