Omnivore - The Whole Foods debacle
The store’s CEO turns out to be opposed to a ‘public option’ for the uninsured
Unless you’ve been living under a rock without a laptop, you already know that Whole Foods has been targeted for boycott. The reason is an op-ed column that the store’s CEO and co-founder, John Mackey, wrote for the Wall Street Journal last week.
The op-ed, which begins with an anti-socialist quote from Margaret Thatcher, is a reiteration of the usual tired talking points against making health care an entitlement — the way it already is for the elderly and veterans.
Whole Foods is, of course, a store whose primary appeal is to progressives interested in sustainable agriculture and community support — precisely the same people who mainly support guaranteed health care for all Americans. So, apart from the fact that it’s surprising Mackey turns out to be so conservative (“libertarian”), it’s also shocking, from a practical perspective, that he would pen something so predictably offensive to his customers. What was he thinking?
The pure stupidity of this is all the more offensive because the column includes an advertisement:
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.
Translation: Shop at Whole Foods and you won’t need health care.
You can read about the boycott effort on a Facebook page that already has more than 10,000 supporters. It includes links to some point-by-point refutations of Mackey’s argument. You can also check out Whole Foods’ own forum on the topic.
It goes without saying that Mackey has every right to express his opinion. The rest of us likewise now have a good excuse to move to Trader Joe’s or Publix and Kroger. As I’ve written many times before, I have long found Whole Foods’ produce vastly overrated, especially for the inflated costs. There’s nothing that the store supplies that can’t, with some extra effort, be bought elsewhere.