Now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, I hope – and sincerely hope – that they will get rid of the snake oil section at Whole Foods stores. It’s is a pretty big section of their stores. Have you ever read the labels of the health and beauty products at Whole Foods? You should! They sell products that sound like they can treat all sorts of medical problems, but don’t actually say that they do anything at all; products like ‘herbal liver cleanser’, ‘herbal colon cleaner’, & ‘kidney tonic.’ Products like these remind me of the traveling snake oil salesmen of the 19th Century. Whole Foods sells a lot of medicine of dubious efficacy, like homeopathic headache remedies, but they don’t sell aspirin, Tylenol, or Advil. Why? Store employees will tell you that they don’t sell these products because they aren’t ‘natural.’ The fact that they work is irrelevant. Never forget this – ‘natural’ does not mean ‘good for you.’ Arsenic, cyanide, and rattlesnake venom are all natural products. They are all found in nature, but that doesn’t mean that they are ‘good for you.’ They also sell a lot of gluten-free toiletries at Whole Foods, such as their own store brand of gluten-free baby shampoo. Now OK, the baby shampoo they sell at Safeway and Giant supermarkets doesn’t say ‘gluten-free’ on the label, but so what? You aren’t planning to feed shampoo to your baby, are you? I never buy anything at Whole Foods health section, but I do sometimes look at the people buying stuff there and wonder: “What is that person thinking?” Most of the customers buying these products look intelligent and well-educated. Today, I overheard a customer at Whole Foods ask a store employee: “Do you sell gluten-free eye shadow?” Yes, it turned out that they did have gluten-free eye shadow.WHOLE FOODS.
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Now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, I hope – and sincerely hope – that they will get rid of the snake oil section at Whole Foods stores. It’s is a pretty big section of their stores. Have you ever read the labels of the health and beauty products at Whole Foods? You should! They sell products that sound like they can treat all sorts of medical problems, but don’t actually say that they do anything at all; products like ‘herbal liver cleanser’, ‘herbal colon cleaner’, & ‘kidney tonic.’ Products like these remind me of the traveling snake oil salesmen of the 19th Century. Whole Foods sells a lot of medicine of dubious efficacy, like homeopathic headache remedies, but they don’t sell aspirin, Tylenol, or Advil. Why? Store employees will tell you that they don’t sell these products because they aren’t ‘natural.’ The fact that they work is irrelevant. Never forget this – ‘natural’ does not mean ‘good for you.’ Arsenic, cyanide, and rattlesnake venom are all natural products. They are all found in nature, but that doesn’t mean that they are ‘good for you.’ They also sell a lot of gluten-free toiletries at Whole Foods, such as their own store brand of gluten-free baby shampoo. Now OK, the baby shampoo they sell at Safeway and Giant supermarkets doesn’t say ‘gluten-free’ on the label, but so what? You aren’t planning to feed shampoo to your baby, are you? I never buy anything at Whole Foods health section, but I do sometimes look at the people buying stuff there and wonder: “What is that person thinking?” Most of the customers buying these products look intelligent and well-educated. Today, I overheard a customer at Whole Foods ask a store employee: “Do you sell gluten-free eye shadow?” Yes, it turned out that they did have gluten-free eye shadow.