Whole Foods – purveyors of food porn

Baby Sorenne is three-months-old today. She slept eight-straight hours last night. Awesome.

Whole Foods Market figures I’m part of their demographic, and is rolling out a Whole Baby promotion.

Throughout the month, in-store lectures by Whole Body experts will provide shoppers with information on such topics as prenatal top priorities, natural baby care choice, tips and concerns for breastfeeding mothers and top 10 "first food" facts.

I checked out Whole Foods’ food safety expertise, which they claimed they were really good at. Maybe they were using the same nutritionists and dieticians as in all those Canadian seniors’ homes who thought it was OK to feed listeria-laden cold cuts to the immunocompromised elderly. Nowhere in the Whole Foods literature is there any statement that pregnant women should avoid refrigerated ready-to-eat foods like soft cheeses, smoked salmon and deli meats.

But Whole Foods, like so many other groups, does manage to blame consumers for the bulk of foodborne illness, in the absence of any data to support such a claim.

Food safety is pretty high on everyone’s list of "things to be aware of," especially in light of the food recalls and poisoning scares that seem to happen all too frequently. But believe it or not, the ones you hear about on the TV news aren’t the most common — a good deal of food poisoning is caused by improper food handling in home kitchens.

Whole Food customers are paying a premium for foodstuffs, only to be told that the company carefully checks the paperwork for all the products it sells, but can do no better than the minimal standard of government.  “For the thousands of products we sell, that’s the extent we can go to. The rest of it is up to the F.D.A. and to the manufacturer.”

Whole Baby is going nowhere near baby Sorenne.