By Suzanne Smelcer
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

I confess. I am a commercial supermarket brand hoarder.

My kitchen pantry overflows with flashy designer labels: Campbell's Soup at Hand (mmm, mmm good when you're trying to apply mascara with one hand and drink Chicken & Stars with the other); Kellogg's Frosted Flakes (make me feel GRRREAT! While the generic Tasty Flakes -- even though they often come from the same manufacturer -- leave me feeling "…meh."); Brawny paper towels and a bottle of Cabana Boy Pineapple Coconut Rum (when you need the steadfast strength of the Brawny Man to wipe up the one-night mistakes you've made with the Cabana Boy).

My desire to buy Cheer with ColorGuard laundry detergent instead of a -- gasp! -- no-name soap, probably started for me at age seven during the 3:30 p.m. after-school TV timeslot. During this block of post-monkey bar R&R, it was next to impossible to dodge the marketing missiles of Fruit Roll-ups, Mattel Barbie dolls and Tonka toy trucks. Growing up in Dubuque, Iowa, in the 1980s, futuristic-sounding words like "recycling," and "organic," might as well been part of the "Return of the Jedi" script, as far as I was concerned. No, unlike the movement today to actively seek out where and how your food was grown, we didn't even need to know what our food really was (Sunny D, candy cigarettes, Crystal Pepsi) -- the more enigmatic, the more fun!

But, the year is 2008 and I now live in the heart of a Fast (innovative/creative), Slow (healthy/cultural) and Green (safe/sustainable) food and lifestyle culture; otherwise known as Madison. I've since learned that there are all sorts of food and drink out there that were conceived organically, locally and artisanally, not from the cereal laboratories of General Mills.

There is debate, however, about whether organic grocery chains are just as bad as traditional ones. Some would argue that instead of promoting high-fructose processed foods aimed at children, they crank their marketing machine to sell adults quixotic hippie ideals at exuberant prices.

After all, do we really need swabs (180 ct. box at Whole Foods for $3.99) made from organic cotton, whitened with hydrogen peroxide and "naturally free of harmful chemical residue" or will Q-tips (625 ct. box for $3.79 at Target) do?

Journalist Michael Pollan tackles these and other ethical (and financial dilemmas) in his popular 2006 book "The Omnivore's Dilemma," in which he investigates something we copiously do daily but with nary a second thought: consume product. Pollan particularly piqued my curiosity about a store he said dispersed "cutting edge grocery lit" in attempt to surge our grocery spend: Whole Foods.

According to Pollan, the "grocery store poets" of this organic supermarket chain scribe flowery prose detailing the "beautiful life of a range-fed steer," which gets posted on a note card and slapped next to a slab of beef. The book describes how Whole Foods' rhapsodists share the story of milk cows that live "free from unnecessary fear and distress," and maybe even hammer out a haiku about vegetarian cage-free hens and their eggs.

Pollan did his research, and found that not much of Whole Foods' produce is grown locally and that terms like "free-range chicken" can be misleading. Pollan details how often times organic chickens, aside from their certified organic feed, live much the same crappy, claustrophobic existence as industrial chickens.

Having heard Whole Foods nicknamed "Whole Paycheck," but having never been there personally, I decided I needed a poetry reading. Here are some of the more interesting tidbits that I discovered as a customer.

Community Service

Whole Foods offers some sort of class or guest service almost daily. Check their Web site, wholefoods.com, or the chalkboard out front of the main doors for an upcoming schedule. Some are free, such as chair massages and wellness classes like "Boost Your Immune System Naturally" and "Stay Fit While You Sit."

Other cooking classes cost a fee, such as "Cooking on a Budget: Fish" ($5) or "Indian Cooking" ($25). They also offer activities for kids and families such as "Pasta Making for Teens" and the "Food Allergy Family Fair."

There is definitely a close-knit community feel here, a place you'd want to spend quality time versus just a pit stop pick-up for a gallon of milk.

Organic Or Else!

"Organic" is as ubiquitous a term here as "coupon" is at a mainstream grocery store -- it's on everything from shampoo to "Snackables" (Whole Foods' version of Oscar Mayer's "Lunchables").

I also learned per the wrapper on Seventh Generation's toilet paper roll (a single one-ply 1,000 sheet roll is $1.19; the wrapper's made out of 80 percent minimum pre-consumer recycled content) that if I (and every other U.S. household) replaced just one toilet paper roll with this chlorine-free, 100 percent recycled Seventh Generation roll, that I will help save 460,000 trees and 1.2 million cubic feet of landfill space.

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