Not hippies but bobos in paradise?
<blockquote>And few Whole Foods Markets are situated in economy-car country. Of the 170 stores in the U.S., none are located in zip codes with average 2003 household incomes at or below $31,000 -- the approximate income earned by a full-time employee earning the average Whole Foods wage.
Only nine of the 170 stores are in zip codes with incomes of $43,300 or lower. That was the median income in the United States that year (that is, half of U.S. households had incomes lower, and half of them higher, than $43,300).
Half of the zip codes with Whole Foods stores lie above $72,000 in average income. A fourth of them exceed $100,000. (Stan Cox, "Natural Food, Unnatural Prices," AlterNet, 25 January 2006, <http://www.alternet.org/story/31260/>)</blockquote>
That said, ordinary supermarkets nowadays also have organic foods corners, as well as ethnic food aisles, where I can obtain soba, udon, and suchlike without going to ethnic food stores.
It's just like the history of sugar and coffee, which began as luxuries for the rich and became mass consumption goods (cf. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140092331?v=glance>). -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>