Whole Foods offers what Marx terms “a landscape of reconciliation” between the realms of nature and culture, a place where, as the marketing consultant put it, “people will come together through organic foods to get back to the origin of things”—perhaps by sitting down to enjoy one of the microwaveable organic TV dinners (four words I never expected to see conjoined) stacked in the frozen food case. How’s that for having it both ways?
And I learned about the making of the aforementioned organic TV dinner, a microwaveable bowl of “rice, vegetables, and grilled chicken breast with a savory herb sauce.” Country Herb, as the entrée is called, turns out to be a highly industrialized organic product, involving a choreography of thirty-one ingredients assembled from far-flung farms, laboratories, and processing plants scattered over a half-dozen states and two countries, and containing such mysteries of modern food technology as high-oleic safflower oil, guar and xanthan gum, soy lecithin, carrageenan, and “natural grill flavor.” Several of these ingredients are synthetic additives permitted under federal organic rules. So much for “whole” foods.
