Whole Foods’ impromptu Tea Party

In an upside down sort of way, Whole Foods recently attracted some strange bedfellows. The conservative Tea Party group began a Whole Foods “buycott” the first week of September, wherein they encouraged members to buy a week’s worth of groceries at the natural foods chain in support of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.

In August, Mackey wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal outlining why he doesn’t like President Obama’s health-care plan. Here’s one line from it: “The last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system.” It also called for citizens to take preventive health care measures, like eating a “diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat.” (Read the rest by looking up “The Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare” on the Aug. 12 opinion page at http://online.wsj.com.)

This prompted some Whole Foods customers and unions who favor the health plan to call for a boycott of the store. That, in turn, spurred the Tea Party’s buycott, which got at least a thousand people so far to participate.