Should I love Macro?

So we all know why we should hate Nestle and their evil agenda (www.babymilkaction.org/pages/boycott.html) and Johnson & Johnson make some pretty pernicious products (have you ever checked out their ingredients? Babies beware!) and don’t get me started on Coca Cola and Cadburys and what they are doing in the developing world. But it’s really easy for me to hate big brands like these because I am in the educated middle class. In fact it’s great to hate these companies – I get to feel both intellectually and morally superior about my clever insights into nasty big brands that promote unhealthy over-priced heavily branded aspirational ‘food’, with very little sacrifice on my behalf. I can live without fizzy pop and heavily scented body lotion.

But really, who am I kidding? I am just another marketing category, only mine costs a whole lot more and makes me feel more exclusive. If you wanna be in my club you have to eat really heavy brown bread at four times the price of normal bread, eat mostly organic, healthy, weighty stuff and everything must be pure, pure, pure. Same marketing practice, I’ve just been sold a different story.

A friend (hi Matt) recently had a rant of his own. He hates Macro (an organic supermarket in Australia). He hates the way, as he sees it, that a couple of businessmen are capitalising / exploiting / commoditising the organic movement and charging astronomical prices in order to make a fast buck. And he’s probably right. But the way I see it, at the very least, Macro is helping to promote food that is more environmentally sustainable, better for our bodies and our planet and my son loves the apple and cinnamon purees. So it’s commercialisation, which I don’t normally like, but the cause is honorable or at least just a little bit better than the other options.