Looking for love in all the healthy food places
WATERLOO— It’s no small coincidence that Waterloo web-TV impresario Krista Hovsepian feels at home in a Goodness Me! Natural Food Market.
The repository of all things holistic is a haven for singles with disposable incomes who want to feel good about themselves, save the planet and, if they show up at the right time, find lasting romance.
“I spend a lot of time at Whole Foods,” says the 30-something actor/writer/ director, who filmed scenes for her 14-episode digital series, Wholesome Foods, I Love You ... Is That OK?, at this very store two years ago, a convenient stand-in for the U.S. chain she frequents on a regular basis.
“I run into neighbours and friends there, meet them for breakfast and know the staff members by name,” she says. “I feel like a lot of us who spend a lot of time in health food stores are hopeful we’ll meet our soulmate.”
It’s the nature of swipe right/swipe left millennial culture, where online dating, ghosting and romantic instability have created a high-anxiety generation seeking love in the brightly lit confines of an ego-enhancing health food store.
“We’re all pretty neurotic when it comes to caring for ourselves,” explains Hovsepian, who moved to L.A. after living in Toronto and Berlin, and based the show on her own life.
“Women in their mid-20s to mid-30s feel like we don’t have it all together. I have a lot of friends who aren’t dating. They can’t figure it out.”
Throw in millennial angst over unfulfilling McJobs and the delayed adolescence that has accompanied every generation since the boomers, and you’ve got a recipe for modern-day tragedy.
“My character’s life is falling apart and she comes to this pristine, well-lit market filled with things that are supposed
to be good for you,” notes the comedic entrepreneur, who filmed her show with a mostly female cast and crew.
“If you go into Whole Foods in L.A., people are literally plowing through you to get to the hot bar, pushing and shoving. I do think it comes down to wanting to have control.”
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, the show — which garnered more than 500,000 streaming hits and has been nominated for 10 online film fest awards — is a comedy.
With a sly satiric sensibility that recalls the absurdist comedy of Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Project and, in Hovsepian’s hilarious onscreen musings, the stammering, stream-of-consciousness whimsy of comedian Ellen DeGeneres, it revels in awkwardness the way Toy Story 4 champions the bittersweet tug of lost childhood.
“Are you hitting on me or just being a big creep?” her comically agitated character asks a horrified man who reaches for a bag of chips and accidentally brushes against her.
“Here’s the thing: I am just here as a female customer in the store trying to buy some items and not really looking to meet anyone right now.”
Intriguingly, there’s little in Hovsepian’s past that screams “COMEDY!”
The only child of a finance-worker dad and flight-attendant mom, she was bullied by classmates for her height and weight, and felt like a chronic outsider in public school. “Humour and comedy come from a lot of trauma and pain,” she says, trying to connect the dots. “I was five-foot-six and 150 pounds by Grade 4. I just never felt like I fit in.”
On the other hand, when other kids were playing with building blocks, Hovsepian was reading at a college level by Grade 3, and learning about fine wines and cognac while talking politics with her dad.
By the time she graduated from high school in 2004, she had been acting for 11 years.
“I spent most of my childhood putting on plays or filming my stuffed animals,” Hovsepian says. “I’d have my dad tape my at-home original play performances, then I’d watch the tapes back, give notes and videotape it all over again.
“At 3, I said to my parents, ‘I’m moving to L.A.!’ ”
It’s been a less-clear trajectory since then, with gigs studying visual anthropology followed by training as a health coach, sports nutritionist and “energy worker” — and, to support her art, translation jobs, production work, photography and a gig as a nutrition coach.
“On the Enneagram Personality Test, I was split between bohemian and aristocrat,” Hovsepian confides. “Which I think sums up the people who shop in this store.
“It can be a status thing. Right now it’s Instagram and Whole Foods. In a year or five or 10, it’ll be something totally new.”
Her self-financed series, which has a second season in the works, has been embraced “by bro-ish dudes into sports,” the online film community and “people craving something light and funny, who just want to relax.”
“There’s a Canadian sensibility to my humour,” Hovsepian says, true to her roots. “It’s subtle and a little bit understated, not slapstick ... (satisfied pause) ... My boxing teacher quotes it when we’re training.”
As we wander between displays for Kefir, Macha and neatly organized rows of Zazubean Sassy, Flirt and Nudie chocolate bars, it’s clear she sees humour in the very lifestyle she noncomedically embraces during her offhours.
“Have you tasted their level five, Grade A, locally sourced, organic grassfinished meat?” Hovsepian asks, quoting a line from her show. “I almost cried over how good it tastes.”
With that she’s off, lost between cucumber watermelon probiotic drinks and the Fatso high-performance peanut butter she will eventually stuff in her basket, looking for love, to quote a famous country song, in all the wrong places.
Wholesome Foods, I Love You … Is That OK? can be viewed on YouTube, Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms.