While Noom is best known as an app encouraging you to build healthier eating habits, its barcode scanner might have uncovered an awkward secret about Erewhon’s high-end salad collection.
Typically, Noom’s barcode scanner works by scanning a food’s nutrition label in order to match it with the extensive food they already have in their database. But when a customer at Erewhon, a high-scale supermarket chain, scanned a $18 salad, the nutrition label on said salad matched up with a Panera salad: a dish which, needless to say, can be purchased for a lot cheaper than $18.
Singer-songwriter duo the Macedo Sisters, who go by @macedosisters on TikTok, filmed the whole thing for TikTok to see, with the video now being viewed more than 71,000 times at the time of writing. In the video’s description, they asked, “Did we just uncover an Erewhon scam?!”
According to commenters, these TikTokers certainly did.
@macedosisters Did we just uncover an Erewhon scam!?! #iserewhonascam #erewhonhaul #erewhonmarket #erewhon #panerabread #panera #scam #scamdetective ♬ original sound – M A C E D O
“Erewon… your dirty secret is out,” one commenter wrote, dubbing the situation #saladgate.
“I’ve been saying their food is not worth the money!” another exclaimed.
A third commenter explained that cheaper outlets selling their foods to more ‘upscale’ places is “pretty common” practice. They wrote, “There’s tons of vendors who just send things in different packages to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Kroger, Target, etc…”
Still, in the wake of #saladgate, other users suggested giving Erewhon the benefit of the doubt, with one comment speculating that “it’s probably a mistake on the part of Noom since every barcode is unique to the product at hand.”
The Macedo Sisters and Erewhon didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s respective requests for comment via email contact forms.
This isn’t the first time Erewhon has sparked debate on social media. In 2022, celebrity chef and self-proclaimed “Mayor of Erewhon” Brooke Baevsky (@itschefbae) sparked debate on the app after revealing that she spent $3,500 on a client’s groceries to “restock the pantry.”
While some commenters were shocked at the overall price — with several pointing out that Baevsky could’ve gotten the same groceries for significantly cheaper elsewhere — others opened up about their own financial struggles in the wake of a growing wealth disparity in the U.S.
“I’m crying in poor people and if they want to adopt a 30 year old I’m up for grabs,” one commenter said.