Whole Foods Disappoints AGAIN – Mechanically Tenderized Rubber Meat

I actually helped open the Pikes Peak Whole Foods in Colorado Springs when I was going to college.  I really, really, believed in their ‘mission’ and I completely and totally bought in to the idea that they:

1. Serve natural and organic foods (AND ONLY NATURAL AND ORGANIC FOODS)

2. Care about the quality of their food, presentation, and customer service.

3. Care about small farmers, the environment, and being a steward of good business practices (People, Planet, Profit)

The past four or five years, I have really been disappointed in the down-slide of everything – selection, customer service, and most sadly – the food that I have trusted to be CLEAN.  It is NOT.

Most recent example?  Tonight, starving, I went to the ‘hot bar’ (not always hot) and got “corned beef”.  I came home, opened up that brown box and took a bite.  Like rubber – like, a horrible, not-right, NOT NATURAL texture in my mouth.  I spit it out and started looking closer at the meat to find thousands of tiny holes.

Reading up on this, I guess it was mechanically tenderized – real natural, right?  Like, after those free-range cattle are allowed to graze on pristine grass and treated humanely – that meat is sent to a machine to stab ten million times to make it chewable.  Is something horribly wrong with this?  I believe that good meat is chewable by itself.  Beyond the tenderization issue – this meat just does NOT look right – color, texture, smell, taste.  It is extremely concerning to me.  As soon as I have my microscope I am going to investigate further…

Most of the food at Whole Foods is NOT organic, NOT biodynamic, NOT local and NOT DELICIOUS.  As a matter of fact, if you go there and if the label says “organic”, you can’t really trust that either (as a marketer I have seen people slap a ‘USDA Certified Organic” label on products even though they are not – there is very little enforcement – the feds are out of money and focused on other problems).  Most of the products in Whole Foods are now their own ‘365 Brand’.  Whole Foods – advocate of small businesses – has eaten its own.  A great product shows up, all of a sudden the local craft company is gone and Whole Foods has its own label of that product.  Cannibalism.

And speaking of cannibalism – the issue with cheap meat (which is what Whole Foods served me tonight at the hot bar) can be very dangerous because often the food fed to the cattle (or any other animal) can be full of horrific additives and fillers – including other animals.  Disgusting.  Terrifying.  This is where Mad Cow disease comes from.  Look up prions (prions mad cow disease).

I am the sucker.  I am the idiot.  I f*%#ing bought in to the marketing – but it is not the truth.  The truth is that Whole Foods is a bad corporation – loyal to its stockholders only (not its stakeholders) – who have left their customers behind.  No more!  People like me are leaving WF’s behind for the same reasons.  Maybe thats the real reason they are closing stores across the country.

I’m free ranging it somewhere else!