Perhaps it was because I failed to consult the US-owned Whole Foods Market in-house feng shui guru when it came to the timing of my first visit to its new 80,000 sq ft superstore. Perhaps it was because an area the size of Wembley stadium was full of pregnant women in smocky tops, cooing over organic babygros.

Perhaps it was because the queues to pay were long and the prices were high. Perhaps it was because I was a total sucker for the create-your-own-muesli bar and the dewy displays of vibrant, wholesome, fresh things to put in my mouth. Perhaps it was because I was so enthralled by the woman who told me that if I made my own hummus from “blitzing” raw chickpea sprouts, lemon, olive oil and garlic in my Cuisinart, then I would be eating the dip “at the peak of its energy”, that I bought three packs of raw sprouting pulses, which is three more packs of raw sprouting pulses than I’ve ever bought in my whole life.

Maybe it is a combination of all the above. But the new Whole Foods Market gave me the same queasy feeling of being manipulated that I get when I buy anything that comes with a morally or ethically superior label, and a whole crunchy-granola philosophy added to the price tag, especially when I am adding to the profits of a $5.5 billion public company that’s traded on the Nasdaq.

I feel – and probably unnecessarily – suspicious.

I admit it, I don’t like Pret a Manger so much now it’s in bed with McDonald’s. I don’t like the idea of Stony yoghurt (you know, the yoghurt on a mission that is going to save the planet, according to Gary Hirshberg, the CE-yo) so much as I did before I learnt that Groupe Danone owns four-fifths of his dairy company, whose no doubt delicious products include Consciously Caramel and Sustainably Strawberry.

I find it hard to swallow. We’re not going to save the planet if we buy more stuff, we’re just going to make hippie capitalists even richer than they are already.

Which is fine – and I’m really glad that it’s Peter Simon, Richard Branson, Anita Roddick, Julian Metcalfe, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ben and Jerry, and all the other beardie, sandal-wearing, kitchen-table, West Coast, dropout start-ups that are doing so well. These guys really do want to keep it funky, and walk the talk, and Ben and Jerry do give 7.5% of their pretax profit to their foundation, just as Gates is a certain candidate for sainthood.

But however socially responsible these entrepreneurs remain as individuals, we can’t pretend that, once a critical mass has been reached, and they go public, that their companies are that different from say, Wal-Mart or Tesco (especially now that Sir Terry (Leahy) is so competitive, I mean so green, that he is carbon-labelling and has copyrighted the Tesco Wholefoods brand).

They are subject to the same shareholder pressure as Marks & Sparks, and the same tight corporate accounting laws – especially since the imposition of Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 in the US – as any other quoted company.

Let’s go back to Whole Foods, for example. Though the head guy, John Mackey, wears open-toed sandals and keeps chickens, and doesn’t draw a salary, and has declared at his Texan ranch that he has enough money and his “deeper motivation is to try to do good in the world”, he still wants to open 40 UK stores and take on the supermarkets. He wants to be Big Organic.

In fact, as he admits, he closed down Fresh & Wild, a popular if ridiculously chi-chi shop selling tofu tempura to yummy mummies and supermodels and concerned celebrities, to which most people walked, merely in order to drive custom towards his flagship store over a mile away on a busy, brand-outleted, high street. I don’t call that “local, ethical, sustainable and humane”, which are supposed to be Whole Foods corporate buzzwords. I don’t call closing down a shop in order to guarantee footfall and traffic at another store evidence that the company cares about the two-part bottom line traditionally so dear to hippie capitalists (your balance sheet measures not just financial results but the degree to which the community’s concerns dictate business decisions).

I call it predatory and profit driven.

But it would be wrong to say that – despite so much evidence – all the hippie capitalists sell out to big business in the end, and all they do is sow their wild oats and reap their harvest on Wall Street. It’s way too simplistic and also smacks of hypocrisy. Anything hip and attractive and fresh and cute is going to attract the flattering attentions of big business. Everyone – even pony-tailed rebels in Birkenstocks – has their price.

And if we ethical shoppers really wanted to make a difference, and reject consumerism, big or small, we wouldn’t go shopping at all. We’d move to the countryside, go off-grid, and raise our own livestock, and grow our own sprouting chickpeas, and write books about it, à la Henry David Thoreau, which is what the really cutting-edge sustainable greenorexics are doing now.

As I left Whole Foods, on foot, of course, and loaded with bags, I could feel the force, the chi that was flowing up and down the escalators, from the bread hall at the entrance past the coffee bar with not one but three mission statements (Respect for the Earth . . . Partnership with the Farm . . . Enjoyment in the Cup – which is quite a lot for one single espresso to live up to) down to produce and treatment hall in the basement, and reaching full strength as it rose to the first-floor oyster bar and sushi counter and pizza parlour and organic pub.

I could feel the force as I read the motto on the walls, Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet – our vision reaches beyond food retailing. In fact, our deepest purpose as an organisation is helping support the health, wellbeing, and healing of both people – customers, team members, and business organisations in general – and the planet.

And I tell you what the force was. It was Sheng Qi. For those of you who still can’t tell your Ba Gua (a Chinese philosophy) from your Ba Zhai (a type of feng shui), this is the life force that facilitates the making of money and financial gain, naturally.

Yes, naturally. Those of us who remain in the market economy, have to face it. It’s not the 1960s or the 1970s any more, baby. These days counterculture and business culture are, as a quick trip to the cathedral of consumerism that is Whole Foods will confirm, one and the same thing.

rachel.johnson@sunday-times.co.uk

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