Selling Whole Wheat Against the Grain

Lobotomies for Republicans--It's the law.

You can't hug your kids with nuclear arms.

It's 10 p.m.--Do you know where your Marines are?

Eighties politics from a flower child's point of view. Dozens of brightly colored, boldly emblazoned t-shirts proclaiming slogans like these line the display window of Cambridge Natural Foods (CNF), preparing one to enter a back-to-nature world of organic farming and left-wing activism.

According to Michael A. Kanter, who owns the store with his wife Elizabeth. "Part of the solution to world survival is to eat foods that are grown naturally without poisonous pesticides."

Everything in the store is made to work in harmony with nature--the paper towels are biodegradable, the avocadoes are grown without sprays or chemicals, and the grains are unprocessed.

Kanter says that he wants to "challenge basic assumptions about how society works, both in terms of how food is sold and prepared, and how people are treated."

He claims not to endorse any specific ideology, but the slogans he literally peddles include "Share the Earth," "The Moral Majority is Neither" and "Join the Army--Travel to exotic, distant lands, meet exciting, unusual people, and kill them."

The antithesis of Store 24, CNF probably has more healthy food per unit area than any other place in Cambridge. Bins full of groats and granola fill the middle aisle, and instead of carcinogenic hot dogs, CNF carries Tofu Pups--The Uncommon Dog.

There is even nutritious alternative to Raman, the infamous monosodium glutamate noodles. Whole-wheat Raman is flavored only with sea salt, seaweed, mushrooms, garlic and ginger--but it costs more than twice as much as the chemical version.

Junk food at Cambridge natural Foods has also been healthified in the form of Barbara's Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Conscience, Samurai Puffs and nine grain pretzels.

For cats and dogs there are herbal flea collars, while humans can wash their bodies with Save the Whales glycerine soap.

CNF also purveys Everybody's guide to Homeopathic Medicines and Aveline Kushi's Complete Guide to Macrobiotic Cooking for Health, Harmony and Peace.

Kanter says business at his natural foods store has been growing steadily since it opened in 1947. He says the merchandise brings in "an incredible cross section" of customers.

Looking around, there are all sorts passing by--scruffy old men, women draped in Indian beads, Bohemian looking young ladies in black, law students with notebooks, yuppies and a punk or two.

Says Honey Schnapp, a silver-haired shopper, "I guess I shop here because I trust the stuff they sell."