Save Us From the CEOs (Part 2)

It seems Whole Foods CEO and founder John Mackey can't leave well enough alone.

Mackey got himself into trouble in the past for bad-mouthing rival Wild Oats Market, sinking so low as to post derogatory remarks about Wild Oats pseudononymously over the Internet. The general opinion was pretty negative: "come on, John, if you have something to say, say it with your own name!" This was followed by a strange about-face: Whole Foods bought Wild Oats.

Now Mackey has written an op-ed piece criticizing the Obama health care reform plan in that bastion of conservative boilerplate, The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The political view from the Journal's opinion pieces is Hobbesian moving slowly into Rockefeller, Sr. and J.P. Morgan. The piece isn't total Robber Barron screed, but it attacks the administration's plans to insure everyone through some kind of government-monitored national health insurance. That's the kind of thing that gets most conservatives coughing up blood, and many in the business world predicting the end of civilization as we know it. No one should be surprised, then, that Mackey's hardly alone in the food industry for opposing health care reform (though interestingly Wal-Mart has come out behind the Obama initiative).

While Mackey's "Eight Points" op-ed piece isn't as far to the Right as much of the Journal's opinion pieces, it places his personal thinking above that of his customers. Food knows no political stripe, but the Whole Foods customer tends to be more liberal and progressive. Slamming efforts by a popular new president to fix the health care mess is the kind of "no win" situation that cooler heads would avoid. After all, what the hell does Mackey know about health care costs and how to fix them? There is no evidence the new health insurance system will prevent the "high deductible" health insurance Whole Foods gives its workers, but there's plenty of evidence that kind of solution won't work for many who aren't as young and healthy as his workforce is. The "elephant in the room" with health care is the sober fact that a minority of very sick Americans use up a majority of our health care dollars.

This kind of piece might be interesting coming from one of the insurance company CEOs, but not a quirky grocer. But it gets worse:

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

While it's true that eating less meat is probably a good thing, predicting it will lead to us passing a century of life is, well, reckless. It's the kind of over-promising that got the organics movement into trouble, to the point that a majority of consumers don't believe the claims that organic foods are better for us. Recent studies, in fact, seem to show no difference in nutrition between organic and conventional foods, and very little pesticide residue.

Oops.

The results of Mackey's intemperate words have been a firestorm of protest, including calls to boycott Whole Foods. Company insiders scoff at this, telling reporters about their 70,000 fans on Facebook and 600,000 followers on Twitter being "the highest of any retailer." But the boycott's Facebook page already has 13,000 members. Yet the raw numbers are really beside the point and show the tin ear the chain has for the opinions of their customer base. Does anyone remember Chesar Chavez? Boycotts can really hurt business, and Whole Foods is frankly struggling. The Great Recession isn't the time to have a wag's nickname like "Whole Paycheck." Consumers tend to see the chain as pricey and even elitist.

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