Editor's letter: Seeking redemption at the grocery store

last updated 8 January 2015

Food is the new religion. I am hardly the first to make this observation, but I heartily endorse it: Secular sophisticates have jettisoned traditional beliefs about sin and sanctity, so they fulfill their instinctual need for purity and redemption through what they eat. I see the proof whenever I visit the local Whole Foods to hunt and gather weekend victuals. There, you cannot help but smirk at the organic, locavorish righteousness of it all—even as you succumb to the spell. (To see how Whole Foods will soon become more righteous still, see Talking points.)

Look at that basketball-sized, organic cauliflower in the produce aisle—grown, the sign boasts, on a family farm just 90 miles away! In the meat counter, the grass-fed beef has a maximal animal-welfare rating of 5, assuring us that the cow was so happy in life it met the butcher smiling. In the coffee aisle, aromatic rows of whole-bean, Fair Trade Sumatras and Guatemalas—roasted locally, of course—promise morning enlightenment. In the vitamin aisle, you can armor yourself against worldly corruption with sacramental resveratrol, acai berries, and hemp seeds, and probiotics with 40 billion beneficial bacteria per capsule. No wonder, then, that the affluent shoppers who push their heaping carts around the store—many in workout tights that display their buns of steel—have such a confident, self-congratulatory air. Yes, they are paying double what groceries cost at Stop N’ Shop. But how much purer we all are, how oxidant-free! How much longer we’ll live than the wicked masses! We are The Chosen. Give us this day our artisanal, gluten-free bread and our goji berry juice, and may our carbon footprint be small. Amen.