Health Food Stores Are Selling Out! Do You Notice This, Too?

I've hardly been to Utah County since moving away seven years ago.

I’m showing you two pages of The Good Earth’s 10-page sale flier.

The whole 10 pages don’t have a single fruit, vegetable, or anything actually healthy.

The Good Earth was where I shopped for sprouting supplies, whole, unprocessed, non-hybridized grains, and a wide selection of organic produce as I raised my four children.

Now, I find it to be a very high-end convenience store that sells 10 times more processed protein and pills–

–than they do greens, vegetables, fruits, and truly healthy foods. The produce section is a tiny corner of the store.

What’s Going on with The Good Earth Store?

I’m not sure if I can even entirely blame The Good Earth. Maybe they’re just stocking what sells, and nobody knows what healthy food is anymore, let alone buys it.

The place used to be full of customers, though. For three weeks, the parking lot was empty every time we went.

Ken and Rae Howard, the husband-wife founders of the 7-store chain, kept fluoride out of Utah County’s water. Every year, it was a political fight.

The whole country had succumbed to the fiction that a toxic industrial byproduct added to drinking water prevents cavities.

The Howards were heroes of mine, and I knew them personally. But a dozen years ago, they died.

The stores were run by a son-in-law, last I heard.

What I can see, though, is that they’re selling 95% upscale, sometimes organic junk food, countless brands of processed “protein,” and thousands of bottles of pills.

The processed-food aisles have expanded since I last visited, and the produce section is one-third the size it was before.

Why? Maybe it’s not that the second generation got lazy and didn’t have the founders' original vision.

Maybe it’s just that they notice what people buy and give the people what they want. I admit that while I went for green smoothie ingredients, I left with other stuff I didn’t plan to buy.

People No Longer Know What Good Nutrition Is

My observation of the last 20 years is that people no longer know what good nutrition is.

At this point, are the “health nuts” buying organic chips? Or are they buying “Paleo”, “Keto” … and “Carnivore”?

After all, the marketers are putting it in front of us all day, every day – so that must be what good nutrition is, right?

My guess is that old-timers in Utah County still go to The Good Earth for produce since they were the first ones to commit to organics.

But then they leave spending 3x more on gluten-free pretzels, fair-trade chocolate, and candy from the bulk food section. (True confession: I left there with some stuff I didn’t intend to buy.)

When I posted a tour of this store, which I supported throughout my parenting career, on Facebook, a few people said they’ve always assumed that if it’s sold at Good Earth, it must be healthy food.

When I visited for three weeks in August, I saw a scene reminiscent of what I see in Whole Foods Markets and the few privately owned “health food stores” remaining in the U.S.

Which has nothing much to do with what research, evidence, and life experience will teach you, which are the whole foods that keep people healthy and vibrant.

Remember when almost all Whole Foods Markets had a juice bar? You could get cucumbers, celery, carrots, and green smoothies juiced there.

Now, they are all gone and replaced by coffee, pizza, and pastry bars.

All across the front of the Whole Foods Markets are cookies, candy, and anything you’d find in any other grocery store.

My husband actually prefers shopping at Publix in Florida to WFM, as he claims Publix has more organic produce!

Anyway, the big sellout of The Good Earth stores was a news flash for me since I moved to Park City in 2016 and Florida in 2020.

Maybe you’ve experienced it more gradually and just gotten acclimated to it. I was so shocked when I walked into The Good Earth.

Because in Florida, there are no privately owned health food stores near us, and I hadn’t been to Good Earth in such a long time…

…I had considered them the last of a dying breed of health food stores committed to good health.

The Food Supply Is Deteriorating

We’ve been cheapening and deteriorating the food supply in more ways than one.

Sure, it’s more expensive, that’s inflation – but the ingredients in our packaged foods keep getting cheaper and worse.

And our “health food stores” have apparently shifted from being all about whole foods and truly superior alternatives–

–to slightly-less-crappy, much-more-expensive junk food.

Like if 10 is a green smoothie, and 1 is Pringles – most of what’s at Good Earth is a 2.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Support local farmers. Support growing fruits and vegetables by actually buying and eating them. Buy organic.

Eat salads, green smoothies, and juicing...before we fully embrace real-life Idiocracy and think drinking Gatorade is better than water! (If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not a big movie watcher, but you really should see it.)

We always need greens, vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. We should grow them at home (indoors or outdoors, or both!).

But we should buy and use produce – not just to support farmers growing good food, but also to ensure we have what we need for good health!

Even the Carnivore Diet guys have wised up and started eating plants.

Sure, there’s a Jordan Peterson here and there whose gut is so damaged he’s reactive to almost all foods, and a YouTuber here and there, too, having to help people overcome horrible digestive problems and flatulence and bad breath that are common to the worst fad diet of all time–

–But, even the author of the book The Carnivore Diet finally had to start eating plants.

(Google Paul Saladino.)

The Truth About Eating for Your Health

Your health demands fiber and micronutrients.

I’m sad that our health food stores have “sold out,” but when we all figure out health isn’t found in a pill or an alternative potato chip, maybe they’ll give us better food.

In the meantime, even if you can’t grow outside – we’ve been having a blast growing food inside the last two years – check out the easy-to-use Lettuce Grow Farmstand and the great deal they’ve offered us.