The $60 Strawberry: Why Health Became the Ultimate Luxury Good

There is a funny glitch in the human operating system.

We meet someone who has made a lot of money, and we immediately assign them moral weight. We assume that because they are good at business, they must be "better" than us. We assume that because they can negotiate a term sheet or scale a SaaS company, they possess some secret wisdom about the universe.

I am a capitalist. I love the game of business. I love the thrill of building value.

But let’s be real. Making money is a skill. It does not mean you are a better person. It just means you are better at capitalism.

Yet, we are currently living through a pandemic of performative wealth that is warping our reality. We have confused "net worth" with "self-worth."

And nowhere is this clearer, or more dystopian, than in the aisles of Erewhon.

The Erewhon Effect: Monetizing Fear

Erewhon used to be a small, niche health food store. It was a place you went if you had specific dietary needs. I respect that origin story.

But look at what it has become.

It is no longer a grocery store. It is a stage set. It is the epicenter of a consumerism disease that feeds on a very specific, terrifying truth.

We are not just lining up for a smoothie because it’s trendy. We are lining up because we are scared.

The Poison in the Pantry

Here is the deep, dark reality that nobody puts on the label.

The standard American food supply has been compromised. It is laden with glyphosate. It is pumped full of synthetic dyes that are banned in Europe. It is preserved with chemicals that disrupt our hormones and cloud our brains.

We are being slowly poisoned by the "affordable" options.

And the market knows this.

The genius of the modern luxury grocery store is not that they sell "better" food. It is that they sell "safe" food. They have taken the basic human necessity of nourishment—eating an apple that isn't sprayed with neurotoxins—and turned it into a status symbol.

They poisoned the well, and now they are selling us the bottled water at a 5,000% markup.

The Normalization of Insanity

We have been manipulated into thinking this is normal.

We see a container of "Harry's Berries" strawberries selling for $20 or $30, sometimes climbing even higher depending on the season and the store, and we don't riot. We pull out our credit cards.

Why? Because we have internalized the idea that quality is a privilege.

We think, "Well, at least these won't give me cancer."

This is the ultimate manipulation. They have convinced us that eating real food, food that actually grew in the dirt without chemical warfare, is a luxury experience reserved for the elite.

It is a tax on survival.

When you walk out of that store with a $400 bag of groceries that contains three items, you are not just paying for inflation. You are paying a ransom fee to escape the toxic sludge of the industrial food complex.

The Poverty of "Looking Rich"

And then, we take it a step further. We turn this exploitation into a flex.

I scroll through social media and I see the haul videos. The perfectly arranged moss gels. The aesthetic tonics.

We have created an economy of signals.

People are going broke trying to prove they can afford to opt out of the poison system. It feels like we are watching a massive play where everyone is an actor. People are going into debt to rent a lifestyle they cannot afford, just to impress an audience that does not care.

It is the "rentership" of identity.

The Capitalist Paradox

I will always defend capitalism as a system for innovation. It rewards problem-solving.

But what we are seeing here is not innovation. It is predation.

It is a system that creates a problem (a toxic food supply) and then sells the solution (organic food) at a price point that alienates 99% of the population.

When we worship this dynamic, when we post the $20 smoothie like it’s a trophy, we are complicit. We are validating a world where health is not a human right, but a VIP perk.

The Ultimate Flex

I want to challenge you to rethink what you are looking at when you see that logo.

Don't just see a cool brand. See the system behind it.

Being good at business is cool. I respect the hustle.

But let’s stop pretending that buying your way out of a poisoned ecosystem makes you superior. It just makes you lucky.

The ultimate flex in 2026 is not a bag of overpriced groceries. It is the wisdom to see the game for what it is. It is the refusal to let your fear be monetized. It is the understanding that true health shouldn't cost a fortune, and we should be angry that it does.