Whole Foods generally sells stuff that people want: fresh produce, meat from every mammal in the animal kingdom, and something called Breaded Chickenless Nuggets. Wait, what? A nugget cannot be chickenless! This is insanity.
That misstep is just one of many ridiculous products Whole Foods makes in-house. We've looked high and low (on the shelves -- they get pretty tall sometimes) to find everything that makes the world's greatest grocery store look pretty darn silly:
Item: Chickenless Nuggets
Why This Is Horrible: This must be a mistake. Nuggets are from McDonalds, sold in a cardboard box, and made from chicken taints, probably. These are way more expensive and are made from "textured wheat protein," whatever that is. Mmm... faux-healthy, nostalgia-laced yuppie food.
Item: Soap with 83 percent Organic Ingredients
Why This Is Horrible: "Oh crap, I just spilled exactly 17 percent worth of non-organic ingredients into this batch of soaps!" the Whole Foods factory worker exclaimed before he was fired. Organic soap is great: good for the environment and your skin. 83 percent organic soap is 83% good for the environment, and 100 percent good for your skin if you can figure out how to only use the parts of the soap that are 100 percent organic.
Item: Organic Quack'n Bites Cheese Crackers
Why This Is Horrible: These are straight-up horribly counterfeited Goldfish. Alert the supermarket police! They're not fooling anyone by making them organic, turning Goldfish into ducks, and inferring that inanimate objects somehow "quack."
Item: Organic Vanilla Flaxmilk
Why This Is Horrible: Rice, coconuts, almonds, and soy can all be made into "milk". But at what point do we draw the line for substitute milks? You better believe we draw it at flaxmilk. Besides, this looks too much like a product called "laxmilk", which hasn't been invented yet, but will one day be a protein shake marketed to impressionable aspiring lacrosse players.
Item: Ancient Grains Hot Cereal
Why This Is Horrible: Ancient grains?! Now they're overcharging for stale grains they probably found on an archeological dig? The nerve! Also, where's this cereal's cartoon mascot? It should be a grandma silently eating this on the porch of a nursing home.
Item: Vegan Cane Sugar
Why This Is Horrible: This is a Fair Trade product, which is great. But why the hell does sugar need to be vegan? Is sugar made from ANIMALS? Sort of! It's made from bone char, a "granular material produced by charring animal bones". Wikipedia says the "sugar refining industry [uses it] for decolorizing." That sounds nasty. Ok, Whole Foods, you win this one. Kinda.
Correction: This post initially stated that the chicken nuggets pictured above are made with soy, when in fact they are made with wheat protein.