Whole-ly Over It.

I used to love shopping at Whole Foods - it was like a magical land of organic foods, products I had never seen in an ordinary grocery store, things I'd never even heard of! When the first one opened within driving distance of where I lived at the time, a friend and I went just to wander around and were so enthralled that we didn't even heard the announcements that the store was closing. An employee had to come up to us and tell us to leave.

Then I started not eating certain ingredients that are basically essential to every packaged food in your typical grocery store (i.e. gluten), and I got excited about Whole Foods all over again: there were multiple gluten free products, and they were marked as such on the shelves! I didn't have to spend hours reading labels to weed out things that would make me feel terrible - I could just go to the gluten-free section! Amazing!

But I just got back from Whole Foods, and instead of "wow" it was all about "I know it was weird that 'snack' bars were here and some of the 'energy' bars were over there and some were somewhere else but it's far more confusing now that they've all been moved to be near the cosmetics," and "since there's a shelf full of the white bread variety and zero of the whole grain variety, as there has been the last few times I've been here, why haven't they changed their ordering yet?" "There's a sale tag by that gluten free item! ...which is in the wrong place, and it's something else that's on sale." And on and on.

I guess I should just add to my fantasy list:
"Someday I'll find a food store that carries real food - including some gluten free convenience items - at reasonable prices, organized in a way that makes sense to anyone other than the one guy who set it up."