Cashew at Erewon

Howbow Dah?'

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GOALszn Captains
November 07, 2023

Sifting Through the Wellness Hype

I am at this very moment eating Haagen Daas Ice cream, but devouring Erewhon’s Secrets. For the uninitiated, Erewhon is a high-end “natural foods” store embraced by celebrities and made famous on tiktok. Erewhon is an anagram of Nowhere–but to the author’s point: “Nowhere, this place is called, and yet no establishment has ever seemed so perfectly evocative of its city” (the city being LA).

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING THIS. If for nothing else, the surprise ending.

I’ve been, and I do not get the obsession. Maybe I’m salty because a bag of normal popcorn costs like $12 there, but to me, the brand reeks of the worst kind of wellness elitism that more often fueled by random trends pulled out of thin air, rather than science-supported information and products. Reading this called to mind Smash the Wellness Industry, an article that has stuck with me since 2019. In it, the author criticizes the industry for repackaging diet culture as wellness and “clean eating.”

How “clean” is clean eating anyway? A full deep dive exploration of this would take more time than we have this week, but I thought the related excerpt below was really interesting:

When John Mackey started Whole Foods in 1980, 20 percent of the store was bulk foods, and when he left, less than one percent was. “People stopped cooking,” he told me. What replaced bins of grain was something barely available in 1980: processed, shelf-stable foods that met the standards of the natural-food community and now compose the center of the average Whole Foods. Bill Tara realized this while still working at Erewhon, having made some organic corn chips that sold out the first day they were available. Oh, he said to himself, the future of natural food is snacking. That’s what’s gonna happen to the whole movement. We’re gonna go back to snack foods because there’s much more enthusiasm than there was for organic brown rice.

Speaking of, Whole Foods Founder Plots New Wellness Venture: After raising $31M earlier this year, the company aims to combine plant-based eats, alternative medicine, and fitness/spa services under one banner.

One more thing that caught my eye, startup Gardenuity. It’s the first “curated platform “bringing gardening and its wellness benefits to companies and consumers. This sounds really cool! I want to dig into this more (ha) but will save it for another time.

Nothing But Net: Weekly Challenge Recap

To kick off basketballSZN right - the challenge was to shoot a basketball. This was also a competiton, with entries based on 1. Effort 2. Creativity 3. Form 4. Style. Winner takes all but votes are still out.

@opengoalszn

As a nod to the start of basketball szn - our challenge this week was to shoot a basketball… #fitnesschallenge #workoutchallenge #fitfam #... See more

Week 10 Challenge:

This week’s challenge comes to us from camera-shy GOALszner Greg. Combining his love of Bruce Springsteen and his interest in running gets us to this: Listen to Born to Run and run at your top speed for the length of the song. 📸 Snap a pic, send it to the group, and don’t forget your #challenge.

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