There is no fate worse than living in a town or neighborhood where nearly all the grocery stores are of the plain vanilla corporate variety. Except perhaps having no food at at all, a deadly disease, losing a loved one, or living under sharia. (Hey, I try to keep things in perspective).

Saffron-flavored corporate grocery stores are so much better than vanilla. Saffron-flavored, like Whole Foods, to which I was first introduced in the early 90s, when I still lived in Chicago. Sure, there's seitan, sprouts, wheat grass, bulghur, plus gluten-free organic pasta I wouldn't go near with a ten-foot pole. But they don't stint on fine cheeses, meats, fish and seafood, breads, wine, and gourmet specialty and ethnic items.

The Whole Foods produce selection is generally superb, and extensive. After experiencing Whole Foods, you'll never really be able to tolerate the soft, brownish onions, rock-hard tomatoes, and green-tinged chicken you're cruelly forced to prod and sniff when vacationing in flyover country, as you may sometimes perversely choose to do.

Whole Foods began in Austin, Texas with one store, in 1980, and is now the world's largest retailer of organic and natural foods. Ain't capitalism grand? Whole Foods is planning some 70 new stores in the U.S., including one in my very own neck of the woods, West Seattle. I'm just about beside myself in anticipation. I was pleased to see virtually no NIMBY-ish hyperventilating from locals in this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on Whole Foods' West Seattle plans.

Novato, California - a Marin County town of about 50,000, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco - is also going to get a new Whole Foods, which has a lot of people there excited, including the Novato Healthy Food Coalition. But there was some controversy because the grocery store complex will also include 125 condo units. A local group called No On 125 Units wrote letters to the editor about feared traffic congestion; and pledged to collect signatures for a June public vote on the Whole Foods project. Well, yesterday was the deadline for turning in the signatures, and the Marin Independent reports today on the results: Zip. Nada. Zilch. Didn't even show up. Guess Novato's happy to have more condo dwellers, and a Whole Foods.

There is social and economic utility to new multi-unit housing accompanying retail, or on underutilized or blighted properties. There is also social and economic utility to high-quality grocers where few or none exist, in the form of jobs and an opportunity for people to eat more healthily. Whole Foods is a shrine to the virtues of real ingredients, and - despite all the gourmet take-out - to the now-threatened practice of home food preparation. In a nation of increasingly obese convenience-food snarfers, we need to get to know our food again, and the value of making time for home-cooking.

Now, if you'll excuse me please, I've got some hellacious guacamole to whip up, and a flank steak marinating in red wine, olive oil, sugar, oregano, brown cumin seed, and chipotle puree, that I've got to flip.

TECHNORATI TAGS: WHOLE FOODS, NOVATO, WEST SEATTLE, CONDOMINIUMS, OBESITY, FAST FOOD, FAMILY MEALS, GUACAMOLE, FLANK STEAK