‘Whole’ lotta trouble

Are Whole Foods' new organic ?ratings bad, worse or worst?|

Whole Foods has had a bad couple of weeks.

First, esteemed food authority Clark Wolfe of Guerneville and New York City wrote a blast for Forbes.com at Whole Foods’ apparent partial abandonment of organic fresh foods and creation of a new nebulous rating system of Good, Better and Best.

Granted, Whole Foods, headquartered in Austin, Texas, was a leader in mass marketing organic foods, but the chain seems to have developed this new system because it’s being chased by Costco, Safeway, and even Target?

Apparently by this new system Whole Foods makes judgments that allow semantic games for good, healthy food, by judging “pest management, including prohibited and restricted pesticides; farmworker welfare, pollinator protection, water conservation and protection, soil health, ecosystems , biodiversity, waste, recycling and packaging; energy, and climate,” according to its website, wholefoodsmarket.com.

A “Good” rating will also consider “GMO transparency, no irradiation, and no biosolids.”

“Better” adds rating of “water and energy conservation, advanced soil health, protecting rivers, lakes and oceans, and farmworker health and safety,” with standards not specified.

And “Best” lengthens the list further to include “protecting bees and butterflies, industry leadership on pest management and environmental protection.”

Organic farmers are worked up because they believe that these somewhat subjective criteria give so-called “conventional” (chemical) growers credibility of some sort, while the organic growers go through applications, reports, inspections and state fees yearly.

All of this is bound to water down Whole Foods’ attempted purist image. When shopping there this week I found many products labeled without newish ratings or organic identification.

And then there’s the recent controversy over phony weights of packaged foods, labeled and priced at a certain weight, and actually containing less ingredients than marked. It’s smart when shopping anywhere to check actual weight content by putting the food on a scale. Whole Foods announced they would place scales near foods, but none had arrived in Sonoma when I was last there.

Like lots of us, I occasionally buy cooked chicken and don’t hesitate for a minute to mention to store managers when flavor is off, chicken seems old, etc. You might also put the cooked chicken container in a plastic bag (since they drip), find a scale and weigh it to make sure you are getting what the label says. One good thing Whole Foods does with chickens is mark what time they came off the rotisserie or out of an oven.

On the plus side, several readers have written to say Whole Foods now offers both chicken and beef broths labeled as made in their Sonoma kitchen.

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