A Sweet Break Up with Whole Foods.

Whole Foods just moved into my very suburban neighborhood. It's small. The big store is downtown Salt Lake, about 25 minutes away. I once lived across the street from Wild Oats in Denver, which later became Whole Foods. It was paradise to walk across the street for all-natural meat, vitamins, and a quick salad bar lunch. The local joke was that every employee had to be highly tattooed, pierced, and under thirty.

Things have changed. I once had a personal sense of romance shopping there. I assumed the products are healthier, the bulk foods sections well maintained, and the employees highly knowledgeable about wellness and nutrition. My assumptions have no basic in reality any longer.

Our neighborhood store doesn't carry many of the products I like. What no fresh ground cashew butter? The answer from the sparse staff is always, try the downtown store. What, no chocolate-covered espresso beans? Try the downtown store.

Last August I found the most delectable Chauo dark chocolate-coated honeycomb candy in BULK at Whole Foods in Sedona, Arizona. They don't stock it in Draper, Utah. In fact, they don't stock it in Utah. In fact, they can't order it for me. With a shrug, the store buyer suggested I phone the Seattle store. I followed up with an email to someone who monitors the website and never received a reply. Oh, well. Next time I get to Sedona I'll fill up the car with this heavenly candy and pray the air conditioner holds on the 10-hour drive home. Or I'll learn to make it myself. So there!

What's interesting about my quest is that it's not for healthy food. It's for CANDY. Which I'm not really supposed to eat except in small amounts occasionally. There's a point to this. Virtually all of the processed foods at Whole Foods that contain more than three ingredients contain sugar. It may be labeled as "evaporated cane juice", or cane sugar, or sugar. But it's still sugar.

Yes, they've figured out that sugar sells. Mary Poppins is so right. A spoonful of sugar can work wonders. It sure does for processed food sales.

I spent an entire year (2013-2014) not eating sugar. In anything. No barbecue sauce, homemade salad dressings only, no store-bought spaghetti sauce. Although spaghetti is a problem because of the wheat in the pasta. Instead, use spaghetti squash. I ate no processed foods. NO, I didn't lose weight. Instead I lost allergies. I still love sugar, obviously.

The other problem with staying faithful to Whole Foods is the competition. The nearby Costco and home-grown Harmon's offer healthy meats, eggs, butter, vegetables, and fruit, plus Harmon's has a fabulous bulk section. And the folks there are super helpful. What the competition doesn't have is Whole Foods superb and appetizing collection of take-home items.

I still shop there. But I'm no longer feeling the romance.