It’s one of the obvious ironies retailers need to resolve if they want to honestly project an image of authenticity. Why do stores offering health and wellness products also sell items that have a proven track record of killing people?

We’re talking about tobacco, and so was Wegmans Food Markets when it announced earlier this week that it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in all 71 stores as of Feb. 10. According to a brief in The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, the retailer will allow current inventory to sell out until then.

People can argue that the job of any retailer is to offer variety and choice — not to be a meddlesome entity that edits consumer choice. True enough. But in the case of tobacco, it’s time the supermarket industry caught up with public policy, which has been banning smoking in all sorts of venues over the past 20 years.

Category sales are falling anyway, and stores operate under the constant threat of sting operations testing prohibitions on sales to minors. Who needs the headache?

Berkeley-based food thinker Michael Pollan used his last book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” to examine how we Americans get our food. This time, he’s looking at the food itself. His latest book, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” is hot off the presses at Penguin.

You might not think retailers — all food industry types, actually — need to read these types of deep-thought, meditative books, but they should. Not only are their customers reading it (purchased from their very own in-store book sections, perhaps?), they’re using Pollan’s logical, even-minded insights to reconsider how they eat. In turn, that influences how they shop.

Pollan’s philosophy is evident on the cover of his latest tome, when he writes: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Translated, it means buy authentic, simple foods, found in the perimeter departments, preferably produce. Great. No problem. That’s what many shoppers are trying to do already. What Pollan does here, in his own inimitable way, is reinforce that desire with a grounded, logical argument that appeared in earlier stories he did for The New York Times Magazine.

So far, it’s getting strong reviews, so it’ll likely do as well as Omnivore did when it was published in 2004. If Oprah even mentions it, however, watch out. Better get your copy now.