The Health Food Store : Major Fail Whale

Wow, have I got a fail whale rant today.

I want to talk to you about health food stores, in particular, how many FAIL to do anything to make you more healthy.  A bunch of overpriced JUNK, snake oils and dubious health claims. It’s disgusting. This is a rant about  my local health food store, which happens to be a small “mom and pop” kind of place, and the only health food store in the area.  I’m not going to mention names, because this isn’t going to be “kind and helpful criticism” it’s going to be a rant, and I’m not feeling particularly “kind and helpful” at the moment.

Oh how I wish this “mom and pop” place would go out of business and a Whole Foods or a food co-op would come to town. Some people might think that is a terrible thing to say, but “mom and pop” are nothing but over-priced snake oil peddlers. They deserve to have a meteor crash through the roof of their store.

And that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of snake oil and BS peddled at the Whole Foods stores, because a stroll through the “supplements and herbs” section of any Whole Foods store will give you an eyeful of plenty of BS, however… the BS does not take up most of the space in the store, this is a significant difference from a place like Whole Foods and hole-in-the-wall snake oil shops.   When I go to Whole Foods, I can trust that they are actually going to have some stuff there that is healthy (whole grains, veggies and a section of packaged raw foods) and will contain my raging appetite in a pinch.

So today I go over there to pick up some raw buckwheat and perhaps some sort of raw packaged snack. Some idiot, or scammer, or both, has labeled their packages of toasted buckwheat grain as “raw,” and being that I’ve been mostly raw for a while now, I know these things and that grain smelled toasted and was toasted.  Even the girl at the checkout agreed it was all mislabeled and that all of the buckwheat in stock was toasted. They pulled it all from their shelves right there in front of me. Busted! But that wasn’t the first problem when I walked in there today, the first problem was that one of the store owners had this table set up to sell $100 bottles of green pills that she claimed were so finely milled on a “nanotechnology scale” that unlike the greens you eat, these greens would get “directly into your cells.” ROTFL. I didn’t have time to debate anyone today, so I just ignored it and went on with picking up some succanat I needed.  When I was at the checkout, I noticed a big sign that said “Homoeopathics are considered medicines by the FDA and cannot be returned for refund or exchange.” LOLzzzzz.  Now if that’s not a crock of crapola, I don’t know what is. If they are representing homoeopathics (placebos) as “drugs” in their store, they need to be shut down.

I happened to see the homeopathic sign they posted as I was raising a small stink over all of the toasted buckwheat in the store being labeled as “raw.”  Would you trust a place after experiencing both a fraudulent sign AND mis-labeled products? I’ll be ordering online now until a Whole Foods or something decent opens in this area.