Why is Whole Foods So Expensive?

Whole Foods has coined itself "the world's healthiest grocery store," yet is affectionately known by most of America as "Whole Paycheck" for its rather elevated prices. But what specifically is the reason that the food at this chain is so much more expensive than everywhere else? More importantly, is a dinner from Whole Foods really worth such a hefty chunk of your salary? 

To begin, multiple journalistic investigations have confirmed that Whole Foods is indeed overall more expensive than other grocery stores. This is not to say that each individual item is necessarily more costly, but a trip to pick up a decent amount of staple foods will put a more significant dent in your wallet at Whole Foods than at Trader Joe's, for example. To find out why, I spent more than a few hours pouring through articles about Whole Foods, its practices, and all of the rules and regulations they have about their products. 

From this search, I've come to the conclusion that the Whole Foods website has an overwhelming amount of links to its "quality standards," all of which ostensibly give them the right to add a significant upcharge to their products. I've summarized the points below that stuck out to me the most, but I will say that there is a lot of information regarding the raison d'être of Whole Foods that I don't have the space to cover. If you're seriously considering shopping regularly there (or deciding not to regularly shop there), I would suggest that you explore their website in detail and reflect on whether you think that their policies are worth the price. 

The Food Ingredient "Naughty List"

• This rap sheet of banned food ingredients is meant for any Whole Foods customer who is concerned about the various additives in processed food. Some, like partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), are correlated to heart disease and/or cancer and should be definitively absent from anything that people are consuming (although PHOs have been outlawed in the United States, so at this point their banishment by Whole Foods is more for the fanfare than anything else). Others are less convincing —​ Whole Foods will not sell any product containing calcium disodium EDTA as a preservative, yet the FDA has determined that its use is generally recognized as safe (GRAS). This list could also be fairly overwhelming to anybody without a Ph.D. in chemistry or a die-hard interest in food additives —​ personally, I would need to do a lot more research before I could make a definitive statement on the utility of ousting them all. 

"Natural" Meat Only

• There has been a major international push for meat associated with the word "free" —​ free-range, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, etc. Whole Foods has picked up on this, and has a list of basic requirements for all of their meat products that includes an absolute prohibition on antibiotics, added hormones, animal byproducts in feed, and animals that spend less than 2/3 of their lives in a pasture. Like before, some of these qualifications are more for marketing purposes than anything else. The use of added hormones is already illegal for pigs, poultry, bison, veal, and goat meat, and Whole Foods admits that some of their pork sold in the Northern California and Rocky Mountain regions may not meet their animal welfare requirements. However, the lower fat content of grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef excites some consumers, and the trend in the United States towards meat raised without antibiotics is a welcome sign to many public health experts terrified of superbugs. 

Sustainable Seafood

• Whole Foods has many resources about their sustainable seafood practices, including a 38-page document about their quality standards for farmed salmon, other finfish, and shrimp (mollusks have their own 37-page document, if you were wondering). Highlights of these pages include a total ban on antibiotics, mammalian-based food products, and pesticides, as well as "rigorous" water quality monitoring and a traceability system from "farm to store." As far as wild-caught seafood goes, Whole Foods refuses to sell any seafood that is rated "red" by the Monterey Bay Seafood Aquarium Watch. This distinction is designed to discourage the purchase of seafood that is "overfished or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment." However, there has been significant controversy surrounding one of Whole Foods' other certification partners, the Marine Stewardship Council, particularly over their approval of swordfish fisheries off of Nova Scotia. With that being said, the potentially disastrous effects of overfishing are virtually indisputable —​ the world must do something sooner rather than later, and some action is arguably better than no action at all. 

At the end of the day, is Whole Foods worth it? It's up to you. There are plenty of products in other grocery stores that meet these high standards, but the attractiveness of Whole Foods is its comprehensive and universal regulation of every product on its shelves. Whole Foods is a profit-seeking company, and as consumers we vote with every dollar we spend. If the issues I've described above (or any of the others explained in detail on the Whole Foods website) are integral to your state of being, then you may not be bothered by their infamous price markups. Just be careful that you aren't tricked by some questionable health claims in the packaged food aisles (stay tuned for next weeks article about that!), and enjoy your fresh, clean, and rigorously-regulated dinner. 

Disclaimer: I am not a licensed nutritionist nor a registered dietician. The opinions expressed in this article are my own, and each individual is ultimately responsible for his/her dietary and nutrition practices. Please consult a physician before starting a new dietary program.