Whole Foods stops selling water filled with asparagus after realising it's ridiculous
Whole Foods finally jumps the shark
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Your support makes all the difference.Whole Foods market reached hitherto unparalleled levels of self-parody this week when bottles of ‘Asparagus Water’ started appearing on the shelves of a store in Brentwood, LA.
Los Angeles magazine associate editor Marielle Wakim posted a photo of the new products on Instagram alongside the comment “Somewhere in L.A., Whole Foods executives are laughing at all of us,” and it quickly spread around the internet.
Priced $5.99 for 16 fl oz, are the bottles the start of a new trend? Will the health store soon be selling cloudy lemonade infused with cured ham? Water collected drop by drop from rainforest leaves?
Eater contacted Whole Foods to find out what the deal was, apparently producing “some bewilderment”.
“The operator at first denied the product existed,” it wrote. “Eventually she transferred the call to a gentleman in the produce department ... He explained that the product was new. 'We've had them on the shelf for the last few days.’”
The Hollywood Reporter followed up, and Whole Foods is now trying to claim the asparagus water was an unintentional mistake. Hmmm.
"There’s been some miscommunication around this product,” a rep said. “It was meant to be water with the essence of vegetables and/or mushrooms to be used as broth (similar to a bone broth), which are typically made over a long period of time soaking in water.
"The product was made incorrectly and has since been removed from the one store, Brentwood, where it was carried.”
The ‘error’ won’t help the Austin, Texas-based company’s recent attempts to re-brand, trying to change the perception that it’s for rich, health-obsessed, pseudo-spiritual urbanites.
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