By Aarian Marshall Something’s afoot in the Park Slope Food Co-op. If you are not a local of bourgeois Brooklyn, if the New York Times Metro Section isn’t quite your thing, you may have never heard of the co-op. It began in 1973 in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, founded by a “group of committed neighbors who wanted to make healthy, affordable food available to everyone who wanted it” (according to its website). Today, the co-op is famous for its organic emphasis, low prices, huge membership (roughly 15,000 New Yorkers belong), and rules so strict that one blogger likened the establishment to “a Soviet-style re-education camp.”  Co-op members must work for their groceries—one 2 ¾ hour shift every two weeks. This kind of participatory grocery shopping creates a community that cares deeply about food—and that has the weekly newsletter and...

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