whole foods

Lesson #1: How to Call BS on a Company Who Promises You Free Shit and Then Doesn’t Deliver

by Rachel on May 18, 2010

I just can’t help myself…and that means teaching you a thing or two! Today, let’s talk about some recent coupon folly.

You may recall that a few weeks ago, I won a contest through MaraNatha nut butters and received a free jar of any nut butter. Awesome. I was so excited. Yay, MaraNatha!

So I decided to use my coupon on a jar of macadamia nut butter. Then I forgot to use the coupon at the store. Stupid, stupid. I wonder if there are statistics on how many people do this and how much it costs Americans every year. I mean, not only did I spend the money on the macadamia nut butter, I also bought a bunch of other things from Whole Foods that I didn’t need, even though I only went there to use the coupon.

Coupons are probably a pretty brilliant marketing technique.

Anyway, I was looking over the coupon again, excited to use it on my next nut butter purchase, and I realized that it said, “On any nut butter” …and then in fine print, “Maximum value $4.99.” Well, none of the MaraNatha nut butters at my local grocery store were $4.99…but I assumed it was because sometimes there is a higher mark-up on specialty products at big grocery stores that don’t carry a lot of them. OK…fine.

So last weekend, I went back to Whole Foods with the coupon, bound and determined just to use it before I could forget. Nut butters have a long enough shelf life, so I figured I’d just buy something now. And I really wanted to use it on raw almond butter. I had had it once a long time ago and really liked it. Since I have every other kind of nut butter right now, I wanted to use my free coupon on something special.

Well, at Whole Foods — where the MaraNatha prices are definitely cheaper than my local grocery store — there still was not a single nut butter that cost $4.99. Even the peanut butter cost $5.99! The raw almond butter? $9.99. TEN DOLLARS for the smallest jar of nut butter I’ve ever seen.

[I think ten dollars is pretty steep for an eight ounce jar. Coconut oil is only $6 for twice that and coconut oil can double as lube. Unless you're this one guy I know from college, nut butter cannot double as lube.]

OK — I’m calling BS on MaraNatha. I’m sorry, but you know the mark-up on your products. How can you design a coupon for a free product when you know damn well it will not, in fact, get anyone a free product? The only way this would have gotten me a free product is if I had ordered a jar of peanut butter from their Web site. (And then paid shipping…???) And it says “any” butter. Not “only peanut butter, which is not any kind of exciting at all.”

And I can sort of see scamming people with a coupon like this in the newspaper. Kind of a bait-and-switch? I mean, I think that’s illegal, but I can sort of see how that might happen. But I won a contest. You wouldn’t give someone a coupon and call it a gift card, but that’s pretty much what they did. And then said, “Congrats, lucky winner!!!!”

Here’s an idea: when someone wins a contest, e-mail them. Say, “You have won one free jar of any of our nut butters! Which would you like? We’ll have it sent right out.” Let me choose the most expensive option if I want to. I won the contest; if I choose to parlay that win into a bath in a $10 jar of ground-up nuts, then that is my right as a winner.

Back at Whole Foods, I just decided to try to use the coupon on the more expensive butter. Maybe the cashier would be super high on life like most Whole Foods grocery employees and wouldn’t notice. Unfortunately, she did; the best I got was a $4.99 discount on my raw almond butter.

And now they have gotten me with the second part of why coupons are so brilliant – because now I’m hooked on an expensive product!

Because really, it is delicious. It doesn’t taste like other nut butters. It tastes more like a great spread; I think it would be so good on a foodgasmic roasted eggplant panini.

But isn’t this how druggies get you? Like, “Oh, you, cute little rich white girl…you have won the contest for looking super vulnerable and open to ruining your life and the prize is…free cocaine! OK well actually you have to pay for half the coke and you’ll be back tomorrow for more because the high doesn’t last long but it’s so good you’ll be addicted…thanks for entering, lucky winner!”

My fridge is now overflowing with the delicious crack of MaraNatha, none of which was free.

The moral of the story: Do not get addicted to expensive shit via coupons and contests. And when a company does do this, call their crunchy asses out.

{ 22 comments }

Getting It: The Terror Squad

by Rachel on April 27, 2010

For many people, dieting is an ongoing process. If you yo-yo diet or “try everything” this is definitely true, but even if you have to work at maintaining, you’ll probably go through a lot of trial and error.

I’ve found that we all sort of go through dieting levels. It reminds me of that scale the Department of Homeland Security came out with a few years ago to let us know when to freak out. I decided to create my own method to asses your risks — just consider this the Department of Diet Insecurity.

What does it all mean? More than the Department of Homeland Security’s bogus scale did, that’s for damn sure!

Your diet is at a level red when you realize…”Oh shit!! I cannot eat like this anymore!” You realize that you feel sluggish; maybe you see yourself in a picture and you barely recognize yourself. And then you start to wonder what happened? Oh…college, Wendy’s, and a desk job happened. If trans fats were currency, you’d be so money. Severe risk of heart attack!

Once you’ve resolved to get things under control, you do a little research and figure out how many calories you need and then you start counting. And then you discover the wonderful world of fake foods! (This level is pink, because these foods are always marketed toward women.) “Omg…I can eat alllll this and not go over my daily calories?!” Yep you can eat alllll that aspartame and fat-free cheese and you can cook your way through the Hungry Girl cookbooks. And you can wonder why you’re still craving sugar, why a Diet Coke won’t cure your 4 PM energy crash, and why you can’t seem to lose more weight.

The yellow level is when you decide that you need to go for healthier foods…so you go for healthier processed foods. Amy’s Organics, frozen veggie burgers, lots of goodies from the Trader Joe’s frozen section, and pretty much anything and everything from Whole Foods. Hey, as long as it looks healthy, right? Vitamin Water? Why not?!?! Multi-grain bread? So what if it’s made with white flour?! You still haven’t quite tuned into the whole sugar, sodium, and, well, nutrition thing…but you’re definitely into organic foods. Because organic Cheez is way better than non-organic Cheez!

Eventually it begins to kick in: oh…veggies! You start to focus on whole foods and not just Whole Foods. You try kale chips. You start cooking things from scratch. Suddenly, your freezer isn’t so full and you’re keeping things very simple. Sometimes that means a few extra scoops of Haagen Dazs “Five” ice cream, but hey…it’s the thought that counts.

Your diet is so local, so organic, and so sustainable and your devotion to the farmers’ market is unparalleled. “That lettuce came from upstate? Um, I want local food, you son-of-a-bitch.” Your love for all things “green” borders on obsessive, but you sleep well at night knowing you don’t eat anything you don’t grow, catch, or kill yourself.

___

OK so here’s the thing – it took me a long time to work my way through all those levels. Seven years ago (wow, I feel old) I was so deep into level red and had no idea. And then I started working my way though the other levels.

I’m telling you this not because I’m trying to make fun of people who are at those levels (although I will mock anyone who eats Cheez)…but I just wish someone had told me to stop dicking around on the pink and yellow levels and spend more time at purple, aiming for green. Unfortunately, diet foods and healthy junk foods have better marketing than vegetables, so no one was really helping me achieve this.

What’s cool now about being at a lower level is that I can really get into the nitty-gritty of what works for me. At first, it’s easy to just think “calories.” But when you start to realize that there’s way more to healthy living and even weight loss than “calories in, calories out,” you start to pay attention to how things like sugar, dairy, and flour affect your body and you can decide how you really want to eat.

Will I ever be on the green level? I mean, maybe, when I can afford it, when I have access to great local produce year-round and can pack my Prius with reusable bags filled with greens that most people consider weeds. But while I would totally grow my own garden, milk a cow, and probably even shoot something, I know that this isn’t an attainable lifestyle for me right now.

So…it’s aspirational. Even sometimes the purple feels aspirational too, when I’m reading ingredients lists and wondering when the hell cinnamon raisin bread got so complicated. But just like there’s probably never going to be a time when the U.S. is totally free from any risk of bad stuff happening, for most of us, we’re never going to have a “perfect” diet. But we can try our hardest to stay away from the top half of the scale. And maybe that will also help the number on the other scale. Who knows? And who cares?? The point is, check in with your eating habits and ask yourself if you’re at risk of a major (heart) attack…or if you have a pretty bomb (ass) diet.

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Health Blogger Playdate Part I

by Rachel on April 18, 2010

Ever wonder what two people who are passionate about healthy food and fitness do when they’ve got a weekend to play?

When it’s me and Leah, it’s a pretty healthy and delicious series of events!

To start things off, Leah came up to my house Friday night and we made a delicious dinner: grilled flank steak, grilled kale, and sweet potatoes.

Holy hell. This is the way to do meat and potatoes. The steak was lean and spicy and the grilled kale is so delicious; I will definitely post this recipe soon because everyone should try grilling greens. It’s great!

After a good amount of girl talk, blog talk, health talk, gossip, music sharing, and nail painting while we digested, we called it an early night because Saturday morning we had to get up before 7 AM to make it to my 8 AM spin class. We had a small pre-breakfast and coffee and then headed out. It was a small class but that was fine. Leah did great losing her virspinity; I was very proud of her for keeping up with the fast jumps! She also managed to snag a shot of me in action (let’s hope this was the warm-up; otherwise I was probably not working her hard enough).

After class we headed back to my house to make a real breakfast. We did a little make-your-own omelet breakfast. We each worked a pan on the stove with our eggs and veggies.

After the eggs, we both showered and then headed back to Ann Arbor for what was truly my idea of a perfect Saturday: Target, Sephora, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and a local grocery store, Arbor Farms. Luckily, Leah and I didn’t enable each other too badly at Target and Sephora (it wasn’t easy; I had to be talked down from Giada’s Dutch oven…it was ON SALE). Then it was time for my real true love…the grocery stores! Or, as I like to call it, Tour de Groceries ’10.

We had lunch at the Whole Foods hot bar and then got down to the serious business of food shopping. All the stores were like zoos since it was a Saturday afternoon but the thing is, each grocery store had something we wanted, so we couldn’t skip any of them. Plus, I really couldn’t turn down a chance to grocery shop. I stocked up green goodies at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.

I had been really excited to go to Arbor Farms for the past few weeks because they have local meat and grass-fed beef which is so exciting. I’ve really wanted to switch to local, organic, and grass-fed meat, but it’s impossible to find anywhere near me. I really stocked up because I can freeze it, and then I don’t have to worry about coming back to Ann Arbor to buy more on a weekly basis.

What’s so great, though, is that the grass-fed local flank steak is cheap. It was $11 for an amount of meat that I’ll get four or five meals out of. I got flank steak, local sausage, and nitrate-free local bacon. I should be set for a very long time!

In the end, I stuck to my budget perfectly — a feat for me — and got a great variety of groceries for the next few weeks. I’m pretty excited about some of the new items, vegetables, and brands I’m going to be trying out! I can’t resist new goodies.

By the time we got back to her apartment, I was wiped out! I had to take a little break before getting ready for the evening’s festivities.

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Faking It

April 1, 2010

I’ve talked about the problem with fake foods, 100-motherf*cking Calorie Packs, and artificial sweeteners before, but I’m afraid some hoes just aren’t getting the message. Increasingly, as I deal with this topic, I find myself closing my eyes and rubbing my temples in frustration like my mother does when she talks to me about spending [...]

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Winter Soup

January 5, 2010

Ohhh how I love soup! I haven’t made it in a while, so I was long overdue! Sunday night I read most of The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I can’t recommend this book enough! The opening sections on food, cooking techniques, kitchen ware, etc. is very useful and just plain informative. But [...]