Custom Clothes: Whole Food Markets

Whole Food Markets

The 59,000 sq. ft. gourmet supermarket — the largest market in Manhattan — boasts a wine shop, a 248-seat café, a sushi bar, a brick-oven, a walk-in greenhouse with fresh flowers, the city's first Jamba Juice, a station that will put a coat of chocolate on almost anything you want, three hot-food bars ( Indian, Latin, Pan-Asian and Chinese), an organic cosmetics center, and 49 registers to ring you up.After 12 years of battling to stop Monsanto's genetically-engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's organic farmland, the biggest retailers of "natural" and "organic" foods in the U.S., including Whole Foods Market (WFM), Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm, have agreed to stop opposing mass commercialization of GE crops, like Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa. In exchange for dropping their opposition, WFM has asked for "compensation" to be paid to organic farmers for "any losses related to the contamination of his crop." Under current laws, Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not subject to any pre-market safety testing or labeling. WFM is abandoning its fight with biotech companies in part because two thirds of the products they sell are not certified organic anyway, but are really conventional, chemical-intensive and foods that may contain GMOs and that they market as "natural" despite this. Most consumers don't know the difference between "natural" and "certified organic" products. "Natural" products can come from crops and animals fed nutrients containing GMOs. "Certified Organic" products are GMO-free. WFM and their main distributor, United Natural Foods, maximize profits by selling products labeled "natural" at premium organic prices.