So this past weekend Peeled Skinny got around to viewing the SNL-fueled "Baby Momma".  Around here we're all big SNL fans (obviously, it's helped that the writers have had their fingers on the American pulse for the past few years), and though we missed it during its summertime run, we sat down to laugh at Tina Fey and Amy Peohler's antics.  We expected fun and diversion, but nowhere on the DVD box does it mention, "This Movie Satirizes the sale of Food!"

Okay, obviously Tina and Amy were spot on as a baby-hungry career woman and a white-trash fertile crescent, but their roles had little to do with food.  Steve Martin's uncredited role as a stand-in for Whole Foods Markets founder and CEO John Mackey, however, marked a rare moment when pop-food makes its way into pop-entertainment, and actually has something to say.

"This morning I was swimming with Costa Rican Dolphins" says Martin as he enters the picture, ego unckecked and pony-tail unabashed.  His ideals are raging, though his business sense vies with them for control (with occasional competition from his libido), and his sense of tact allows him to steal every scene that he's in.  I don't know if John Mackey actually ever wanted to base a store-design upon a perriwinkle shell, but the very idea of it happily turns green marketing inside-out.

Of course the producers of the film use a parody of Whole Foods (called "Round Earth Market") to maintain some zeitgeist, to add an element of topical satire (some Harvard business grad is writing a paper on their satire of how WFM picks its locations as we speak), AND to pad the production budget- several of our buddy companies paid for some gratuitous product placement, REPEATEDLY.

Has Whole Foods Market become so ubiquitous as to warrant mass satire?  Or were the producers expecting that their target audience would also be WFM's target consumer?  The film lets Greg Kinnear actually voice some of Michael Pollan's criticisms of Whole Foods, actually mentioning Chilean Sea Bass.  Has Pollan gone "Pop" too?  Is the business of food now cool enough to be ridiculed?

Regardless, with Baby Momma, I think we can say that Whole Foods has it coming, and actually gets to play both a background hero AND a villain.  In the end, "Round Earth" helps bring the characters together it some minor way, and everyone walks away happy (I'm not spoiling anything- it's a comedy after all).

Raw Food, on the other hand, gets a delightful skewering that led to my favorite joke, as the film's two love-interests, misinterpretting each others tastes, end up at a Raw Food restaurant eating horrific Yeast Balls....

Confession: Peeled Skinny's WORST MEAL EVER was at a Raw Food restaurant in San Francisco, a meal that STILL gives me gas.  With all due respect for Raw-Foodies, I'm going to be giggling at this scene from Baby Momma for YEARS to come.  And I'm going to be glad about the magical combination of food and heat for all my life.

-Peeled Skinny

(P.S. congrats to Amy Poehler and Will Arnett for the birth of their new baby boy.  Life imitates art!)