Whole Foods still sucks at food safety advice - Hosea from Top Chef edition
In July, 1977, Fernwood 2Night, a satirical talk show like no other, began airing as a summer replacement for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. I was explaining this to Amy the other night as Fred 
Willard showed up in a cameo in yet another movie – the guy’s everywhere – and I was telling her about this wildly satirical talk show featuring Willard as sidekick Jerry Hubbard, and host Barth Gimble, played by Martin Mull.
According to the wiki entry, “Fernwood 2Nite was set in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio. The show satirized real talk shows as well as the sort of fare one might expect from locally-produced, small-town, midwestern American television programming. Well-known actors usually appeared playing characters or a contrivance had to be written for the celebrity to appear as themselves. (In one episode, Tom Waits' tour bus happened to break down in Fernwood.)"
Barth and Jerry came to mind as I watched the latest video entry from Whole Foods Markets, this time on how to cook a turkey for the upcoming holidays, featuring Hosea, some dude who won Top Chef Season Five.
I so wished it was satire.
Barth, or Martin Mull captured the essence of cooking turkey in his book and 1985 mockumentary, History of White People in America, volume 1, in which Mull and Mary Kay Place engage in a Thanksgiving discussion and conclude, “You can’t overcook turkey. That’s what the gravy is for.”
When it comes to offering bad food safety advice, Whole Foods never fails. They really suck at this food safety thing. As I’ve written before, Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods, and their own CEO says they sell a bunch of junk.
Leave it to Whole Foods to use a chef to offer food safety tips.
In a 5-minute video, Hosea says to rinse the bird in cold water – don’t you’ll just spread dangerous bacteria everywhere – and during prep manages to cross-contaminates everything by touching the raw bird, then the butter saucepan, the pepper mill, the salt container, the wine bottle and so on.
A chart of suggested cooking times based on weight and whether the bird is stuffed or not is provided – it’s useless – but at least Hosea says to use a thermometer. He also says or until the juices run clear. Ignore the juices part, use a tip-senesitive digital thermometer. Hosea also says cook to 165F (correct) but then let it sit for 20-40 minutes, which is also correct, but will also raise the internal temperature by about 20F. Bring on the gravy.
In Canada, where the laws of physics are somehow different, Health Canada continues to recommend cooking all the crap out of a bird until 185F. The U.S. changed its advice to 165F years ago. When asked why, Canadian government types won’t talk. It’s a secret.
We’ve got lots of turkey cooking advice and a video from last year. And in honor of Fernwood 2Night, a clip about natural foods, the kind you may find at Whole Foods. Along with bad advice. Except it's been disabled for sharing. So here's Tom Waits.
Nose stretcher alert: Whole Foods explains why it stopped selling raw milk in Florida
Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods, and their own CEO says they sell a bunch of junk.
Whole Foods in Florida has officially dropped raw milk from its shelves. Until Thursday, Whole Foods market sold raw milk with a pet food label. Human drinkers bought it for their personal consumption.
During an interview published yesterday by the Miami New Times, Russ Benblatt, Whole Foods regional marketing director for Florida, said,
“This was a decision that was made here at the regional level. I can't get into too many details, but it was purely a business decision to stop selling the raw milk, and I can't get into the specifics of it. … We made a decision to stop selling it as a pet food. We've never sold it for human consumption. … We're a grocery store we try not to get involved in politics. … If we're involved in politics then I'm not aware of it. We're not involved in any lobbying or political action committees in the state of Florida.”
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Just a grocery store. Uh-huh. There isn’t a foodie cause Whole Foods wouldn’t embrace to peddle a few more dollars worth of crap.
Beer can be made at home: so why is Whole Foods featuring beer shipped from Germany? Not sustainable
Pointing out the hypocrisy of Whole Foods is like going quail hunting with Dick Cheney: too easy, too stupid, and someone’s going to get shot in the face (or near the heart).
Whole Foods, defenders of all things natural and sustainable, is featuring beer imported from Germany -- or Czech Republic, depending on who's brewing it -- this month.
Beer is one of those things that can be fairly easily produced in a local venue: hops, malt, water, yeast.
Whole Foods CEO John Mackay was right last week when he said Whole Foods sold a bunch of junk.
Shurly some mistake: Whole Foods to offer health advice, healthier foods
Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, and offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods.
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The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Whole Foods chief John Mackey is now going to reposition the Austin, Texas, chain as a champion of healthy living in a return to its natural-foods roots.
"We sell a bunch of junk," he said, vowing to promote healthier lifestyles for its customers and employees. "We've decided if Whole Foods doesn't take a leadership role in educating people about a healthy diet, who the heck is going to do it?"
Given the track record outlined above, almost anybody and any group would be better qualified than Whole Foods. Besides, as soon as someone says they’re going to educate someone else, it’s propaganda rather than compelling, evidence-based information,
I look forward to the whoppers being offered up as educational material in Whole Foods' future.
Whole Foods porn
If you’re a retailer as big as Whole Foods, how hard is it to provide accurate information?
For their July 4 “perfect burgers” the food porn emporium says, “Grill meat to desired doneness; about 4 to 6 minutes per side over a medium hot fire. Be careful not to overcook, which will dry out the meat.”
This means nothing, but as a smart food science prof once told me, processing is all about adding air and water and charging more; Whole Foods adds swarmy words and charges more.
Color is a lousy indicator of safety. Use a tip-sensitive thermometer, and use food porn for titillation, not safety.
I buy my eggs at a new-age store so they're safe; Barry's got my back
One of the few pleasures in watching the movie, Baby Mama, is Steve Martin’s turn as Barry, the narcissistic, new-age genius who runs a Whole Foods-like organic supermarket chain, seen here transferring his success to v.p. and mama-to-be Tina Fey.
Stores like Whole Foods are easy to poke fun at because of their earnest idiocracy. But when a lifestyle choice crosses into public health outcomes, I stop snickering.
A buyer for one of these new-age stores sent the following to a supplier:
“I'm still not too crazy about pasteurized just as I'm not too crazy about ultra pasteurized dairy products in general. All one has to do is look at movement in our region regarding raw products, raw milk, and one quickly learns that our customers are for the less processed the better. In my 25+ years in the grocery business I don't recall ever having eggs returned to the stores because they were bad. I haven't refrigerated an egg in over 20 years myself personally, so although "salmonella" is currently getting a lot of press I'm not convinced that it really applies to eggs. When I worked at (another store) for nearly 13 years, we didn't have one incident that I was aware of regarding "bad eggs," and we NEVER refrigerated them until the law passed making refrigeration mandatory. We must have sold a billion eggs in those 13 years.”
I wouldn’t want this guy purchasing eggs for me, and not just because of his annoying use of air quotes – what Jon Stewart calls dick fingers. Salmonella is getting more than a lot of press; it makes a lot of people barf. And eggs are a source.
Whole Foods bites
I could devote an entire blog to debunking the nonsense that is Whole Foods.
Every day they have a post that contains the most outlandish, fantastical claims about food – and they expect customers to pay twice as much.
Unbeknownst to me, Amy came across part II of the Whole Foods fairy tale about what it means to be natural. And she asked a question:
In light of recent major recalls including natural peanut paste, I’d be more interested in knowing what kind of research you put into the safety behind your ingredients.
That comment has yet to be posted; it never will. The good demagogue that speak for Whole Foods know to never lose control of the microphone. Especially at those prices.
Spider found at Tulsa Whole Foods
An employee at Whole Foods Market in Tulsa, OK, recently caught a spider (below) roaming in the produce section.
The director of animal facilities at the University of Tulsa, Terry Childs, thought it to be a Brazilian wandering spider, or banana spider, which is considered to be the most deadly spider in the world. Childs said the spider likely came to the store in a bunch of bananas from Honduras.
A manager at the store said employees check the produce for spiders and insects, and believes that’s why the spider was discovered before it left the store.
Whole Foods said in a later statement,
"We take every precaution to inspect all of our produce as it arrives in the store and prior to it being merchandised on the sales floor. This incident is an extremely unusual circumstance, and one that we've never encountered before. We are confident that this will remain an isolated incident as we are very cautious when unpacking produce for our sales floor."
I can’t find this statement, so I’m not sure if the entire thing is so defensive and impersonal. I wonder whether the store or chain ever said sorry for the scare, or that they were glad no one got hurt.
Granted, the situation may not have been as dire as was first believed. The curator of aquariums and herpetology at the Tulsa Zoo, Barry Downer, saw video and photos of the spider (who has now been destroyed) and thinks it may have been a Huntsman spider—an arachnid that is harmless to humans.
Regardless of its true identity, the spider was perceived as a threat to shoppers and Whole Foods would do well to recognize that.
If anybody finds their statement, I’d love to check it out: casey.jo.jacob@gmail.com, or comment here for all to enjoy.
Whole Foods fairytale
Baby Sorenne is already taking an interest in colorful books and images. Soon it will be storytelling.
The Whole Foods blog had a particularly fantastical and derogatory tale today.
Joe Dickson writes in a piece entitled, Standards Even A Kid Can Understand, that he couldn’t figure out how to write about the complexity of quality in one post so he gets to do a series.
Joe, it’s called editing. You’re a terrible writer.
“Is everything here organic?” and Paige said “no” but that everything was natural. And then fumbled through various attempts at explaining what natural means - realizing as she rambled that a typical 11-year-old doesn’t have the background to understand how much junk is in our conventional food supply. Paige eventually came up with this: “You won’t find blue catsup here because catsup comes from tomatoes and tomatoes aren’t blue in nature.” And the friend got it: “So, catsup is red here?” Yes.
Joe the former nursery school teacher then introduces those readers who haven’t fallen asleep or clicked elsewhere to Quality Standards Storytime.
Once upon a time there were only natural foods. I know this is obvious, but one of my most strongly-held beliefs about food is that we should pay attention to the diets that humans have followed for 200,000 years or so. Our bodies and brains evolved on a diet of unprocessed foods — mostly plants and nuts, some animal protein and very little else. The 50-100 years since the advent of food processing and artificial preservatives occupies about .05% of that timeline. I think it’s fairly logical to play it safe and stick to the diets that have proven safe and healthful for most of recorded time.
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Then, sometime in the twentieth century, Artificial Preservatives, Colors and Flavors were invented by “food scientists,” devoted to improving the quality of our lives through science. The ability to color, flavor and preserve food indefinitely made it possible to recreate authentic-seeming foods and make them last virtually forever. …
The Organic and Natural Products movements were born in opposition to these changes, based on the belief that natural food is healthier, better for you and better tasting. As the conventional grocery industry got weirder and weirder, the group of resisters got bigger and bigger. Whole Foods Market was born out of that opposition, founded in 1981 as a natural alternative to mainstream grocery stores. Organic agriculture also followed a similar route, rising as a resistance movement to chemical/industrial agriculture during the 1970s and 80s.
What a fairytale. Maybe Whole Foods should worry first about keeping dangerous bacteria out of the food it sells – it’s part of that food science thing – so its customers don’t barf.
And leave the storytelling to experts like Robert Munsch of Guelph, Ontario, whose 1986, Love You Forever, is one of the most popular children’s books ever, with some 8 million copies sold (my kids preferred The Paper Bag Princess, while I preferred Good Families Don’t, because it’s about farts).
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Shortly before baby Sorenne was born I gave an animated telling of the story to our prenatal class, complete with bad singing, based on years of practice, and because I’d seen Munsch tell the story a few times.
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.
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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.
Whole Food food porn - it ain't about safety
I’ve never gotten the Whole Foods thing.
They display the food in a loving manner, it’s enjoyable to hang out at the stores, but like most porn -- or food porn – it’s ultimately unfulfilling.
Two months ago, Whole Foods Markets Inc. “launched a revamped and more interactive Web site offering recipes, videos of cooking demonstrations and its Whole Story Blog that enables users to talk to one another about everything from food safety to prices.”
I subscribed to the RSS feed to stay current on all things Whole Foods. The blog they are blowing has nothing to do with food safety and everything to do with food porn.
I can just stay at home with a copy of Bon Appetit.
E. coli outbreak in ground beef linked to Whole Foods Markets
When I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Whole Foods was adjacent to my apartment complex. It was cruel, really. I couldn’t afford to shop there very often but the food always looked so delicious, and, well, wholesome. Yesterday, however, Whole Foods Market recalled fresh ground beef sold between June 2 and August 6 for a possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7. Seven are sick in Massachusetts and two in Pennsylvania. None in Ann Arbor, yet.
Whole Foods has successfully built its reputation on natural and organic foods with high prices to make you believe you are doing good to your body by shopping there. Personally, I shopped there for the wide array of cheeses and pâté that wasn’t available in my favorite (more affordable) grocery. This outbreak raises the question for me – why are people still getting sick from ground beef processed at Nebraska Beef Ltd. that was previously recalled? And, as Bill Marler points out, why was Whole Foods selling Nebraska Beef? He offers a list of hard-hitting questions for the elite grocery chain that touts its own high standards.
On a side note, the Whole Foods that used to be in my backyard in Ann Arbor has since become a Trader Joe’s. Whole Foods moved down the street to a much larger and fancier location.
Mice close Chicago Whole Foods
As you already know, the Health Department closed our store after finding that we did not fully comply with a few concerns they had, including evidence of mice."
The Chicago Tribune reports that a Whole Foods on North Avenue, in one of Chicago's wealthiest neighborhoods, was found with mouse feces in the back room and a dead mouse in a glue trap.
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Some expressed themselves on the Tribune's Web site:•"This is what happens when grocery stores are run by hippies who don't believe in pesticide."
•"Why can't mice have an organic experience too? I am shocked that an attorney has not filed a class suit because Whole Foods did not provide adequate bathroom facilities for the mice."
•"Sadly, if Whole Foods packaged [the droppings] nicely as a topping for toast points and charged $10.99 per ounce, the lemming snobs would probably buy it."
Fancy food does not mean safe food: Whole Foods and golf club edition
Store manager David Cosper said the market’s sheer size and diversity of offerings may have contributed towards the failing grade, which Whole Foods took steps to fix “immediately."The major violations included improper handwashing and use of gloves at a hot counter area, improper hot and cold holding temperatures in several food areas and lack of availability of hot or cold water at two sinks. Other violations included improper handling of food and food storage, uncovered containers and missing sneeze guards.
In Virginia, the Daily Press reports that Ford's Colony, a popular gated community in James City County complete with a 200-acre wildlife preserve, a wine cellar with 1,600 labels and three 18-hole golf courses, has also, on occasion, been home to poorly dated food, meat kept at improper temperatures and employees who were caught not washing their hands.
Ford's Colony is hardly the only private club with health violations in Hampton Roads. Country clubs, yacht clubs and golf clubs with exclusive memberships from James City to Suffolk have all recently received critical marks that belie the air of posh living these communities pride themselves on.
It's like Ben and I discovered during the halfway point of a food safety golf tournament in Baltimore in 2005, when a burley, 50-ish goateed he-man requested his hamburger be cooked, "Bloody … with cheese."
His sidekick piped up, "Me too."
I asked the kid flipping burgers if he had a meat thermometer.
He replied, snickering, "Yeah, this is a pretty high-tech operation."
The young woman taking orders glanced about, and then confided that she didn't think there was a meat thermometer anywhere in the kitchen; this, at a fancy golf course catering to weddings and other swanky functions along with grunts on the golf course.
