If every city has a culinary punch line, it's easy to identify Los Angeles's: Erewhon, the cultish chain of grocery stores, where a half gallon of "hyper oxygenated" water will run you an unconscionable $25.99. It started, in 1966, as a bean-sprouts-and-bulk-bins health-food stall in Boston, the brainchild of Japanese immigrants who evangelized the macrobiotic diet. Since then, it's moved West and morphed into a slick, high-end wellness behemoth― a constant site of workaday paparazzi photos, a case study in capitalism posing as counterculture.
The chain is especially famous for its "tonic bar," which hawks vibrantly hued, supplement-laden smoothies that often double as billboards for influencers and pop stars (see Katy Perry's pre-album release Orange You Glad I Love You) or for self-described health-care professionals pushing highly specific diets. The latter category includes Dr. Paul Saladino, an advocate for an early-human-inspired menu of grass-fed meat, fruit, and unpasteurized dairy, and the twisted mind behind the Raw Animal-Based Smoothie, made with freeze-dried beef organs, raw kefir, and blueberries.
A tour through Erewhon is a tour through the cultural pathologies of the day: seed-oil paranoia, Jordan Petersoninfluenced masculinity panic, gratuitous self-medication for the remote-work set.
In my first few weeks as a resident of L.A., where I moved recently from New York, I stalked the aisles with forensic focus. A narrative of modern ills emerged, and if these are universal-who among us does not seek higher energy, improved immunity, and better sleep, sex, skin, and hair? the means for achieving them seemed to boil down to two strikingly polar schools of thought. One side, more predictably, extolls the plant-based diet, which eschews animal products, while the other recommends consuming as many products from as many different animals as possible.
この記事は The New Yorker の October 07, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は The New Yorker の October 07, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
