Progress Now Action

Circular filed under: I Should Have Guessed This Myself

Slate's Field Maloney has a good piece here on Whole Foods and how they take advantage of the perceived value of organic produce. It's partly our own fault, we have drawn a bright line between organic goods and virtue, but the actual geometry of the issue is not nearly so straightforward.

This actually dovetails nicely with this from NPR's reliably hilarious Andrei Codrescu. He accurately points out that the need to Push Product has, well, pushed all the other sorts of dialog out of the way.

I think Codrescu's piece informs the WF discussion. WF has, deliberately or otherwise, permitted their 'Message' to get tangled up with the information they give to their customers, and in many cases, the result winds up misleading consumers. That's unfortunate, but like I said, I probably should have guessed this myself.