If looks like a $6 bottle of water and it sounds ridiculous, it's probably a mistake.
That's Whole Foods' story, anyway, and they're sticking to it.
A photo posted by Marielle Wakim (@marielle.m.n.o.p) on Aug 3, 2015 at 8:03am PDT
The labeled "asparagus water" was priced at $5.99 at the Brentwood, California Whole Foods and even the most fanatical Whole Foods devotees rolled their organic and free-range eyes.
Though a Whole Foods employee from the location initially told Eater that the water was to drink and "The nutrients from the asparagus do transfer into the water," Whole Foods' Senior Media Relations Specialist Liz Burkhart set the record straight.
"We looked into this right away and found that this item was being carried in just one of our stores in California," Burkhart 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 where it was carried."
Anyone can make a mistake and this one seems pretty harmless. However, is there any doubt that if this had, for some reason, taken off as the next big healthy eating fad, that Whole Foods wouldn't have turned a mistake into a marketing bonanza? The entire country could have been guzzling asparagus water like it was the fountain of youth and we would never have known that it began as a labeling mistake.
Thanks for calling out the asparagus snafu, social media vigilantes. You may have saved us all from the next crazy overpriced food fad.