Mostly Plants

Michael Pollan has posted a letter to whole foods at his blog, responding to the whole foods CEO’s criticism of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ll give you the punch line here, but you really ought to read the whole letter–explaining Pollan’s conclusion:

After spending time with you and reading your letter, I’ve wondered if perhaps I did, as you imply in your letter, present a unfair caricature of Whole Foods in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” suggesting a store where organic, local and artisanal food is just window dressing to help sell a much more ordinary industrial product. Indeed, nothing would please me more than to conclude I owe you and the company an apology. I’m not quite there yet. But I sincerely hope you will prove my portrait of Whole Foods wrong, that the company has not thrown its lot in with the industrialization, globalization and dilution of organic agriculture, but rather stands for something better. For my own part, I stand ready to write that apology, and look forward to doing it.

In the balance of the letter, Pollan makes clear that Whole Foods is not the Big Organic Boogeyman, but it ain’t your farmers’ market either.  The moral of the story is really the same as the moral of his whole genre of food commentary: being a smart food consumer requires researching and understanding the issues involved, not just shopping at a different store or buying food with a particular badge on it.