Whole Foods Market, every Bro’s favorite spot to spend much more than they can afford for food that is only marginally better than its more affordable grocery store counterpart, is full of shit.
Of course, you knew that. I knew that. Everyone knew that. Any company that imports its asparagus from Argentina just because isn’t really a force for global good.
We let them get away with it, because damn that prepared foods bar is dank as HELL.
The U.S. government, though, ain’t gorging itself on line-caught tuna, and now it’s telling Whole Foods to shut the fuck up.
The brand claims to be “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store,” which, yea, sure, maybe, but it recently tried to trademark the phrase “The World’s Healthiest Grocery Store.”
No fucking way said America. Their application was rejected by the patent office. From The Washington Post:
The agency said it rejected the trademark because it makes a “laudatory” claim, or is based on exaggerated praise that can’t be proven or has not been proved true. For instance, Papa John’s slogan “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza” was initially struck down by a court in 2000 because it could not substantiate that it indeed had better ingredients than all of its competitors.
Companies still try to trademark these sorts of affirmations anyway, said Jonathan Hyman, a partner at California-based intellectual property law firm Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear. “Companies attempt to register these kinds of marks all the time, though it’s sometimes not successful.”
That’s because they can manage to argue that the superlative is a distinguishing mark of the company, rather than a factual statement, Hyman said. Papa John’s continued to advertise their pizza pies with “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza” on the basis that their consumers already associated that with their company. Whole Foods used a similar argument when it managed to claim “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” in 2010, Mike Ortega, trademark consultant for brand agency Interbrand, wrote in an Interbrand publication.
Whole Foods only has 20 stores outside the U.S., so this is indeed some bullshit. But you knew that already.
And we’re all still gonna waste our money there. Because damn, it’s still tasty.
[Via The Washington Post]
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