The mailer was intriguing enough. Its cover could serve future archaeologists well. It's a shot of a juicy, grill-marked burger, top of the bun cocked to one side, orbited by a wedge of avocado, sliced onion, and a halved red pepper; a Granny Smith apple, the tip of a banana, and a pebbled green thing - is that broccoli? - huddled in the lower right-hand corner.
It's all there in a cornucopic nutshell, the king (the burger) and his court (the veggies) - the Western diet, lacking only the chips, rendered in bold relief.
It is an ambiguous photo, its message mixed, devils and angels dancing together, the food portrait disguising as well as revealing: It is silent about food miles, or feedlots, or carbon footprints, or sodium content.
A kind of proxy First World-vs.-developing world tension is quick to surface, though, when you scratch the surface. It goes like this: If you live in the right zip codes and have sufficient funds, then by all means have at the chic, pure, and pricey suburban farm stands, the Whole Foods (or Wegmans or Trader Joe's).
The Slow Food movement even has a name for this breed of consumer (hey, I'm one of them!). It calls them "co-producers," handmaidens of ethical, artisan farmers and cheese-makers, enabling them to do their thing.
If you're less well-heeled, though, and suddenly out of a job, and price is the object, well, Wal-Mart's and Target's prices (not to mention those at Produce Junction, or Genuardi's, which is discounting in reaction to Target's move) can look like godsends.
Now and then, you will hear libertarian think-tankers - the Cato Institute, for one - tsk-tsking opponents of bringing big-foot Wal-Marts into the inner city: It's the most efficient way, they argue, to pump affordable, fresh food into neighborhoods that are otherwise dependent on chips-and-soda bodegas.
