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Time to boycott Whole Foods?

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's answer to Health Care Reform sounds awfully like "It's your fault if you are sick or dying."  The rest is all about letting private insurance companies do their thing without government mandates. The last few paragraphs are especially irritating.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

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.

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9 responses to “Time to boycott Whole Foods?”

  1. Dean C. Rowan

    What I like about Whole Foods: a 6-pack of Green Flash IPA is a buck less there than elsewhere in town. What I don’t like about Whole Foods: the thin veneer of progressive values glued over an ordinary supermarket. A capitalist supermarket.

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  2. Ruchira

    Yes, I had seen the Kathleen Parker op-ed. Parker is a conservative although her stomach for the right wing agenda was sent into severe upheaval by Sarah Palin. She is now somewhat of an apostate for the really out-there wing of the GOP.
    All this clap-trap about “healthy living” as a counter argument for a public health care system is a red herring. Who has ever suggested that if we have a public option in our health care system to compete with private insurance, healthful living will no longer be an advisable choice? After all, who goes after Big tobacco if not the government? Will the CDC and the NIH become silent if government participates in the health care of Americans? Are the Brits and Canadians getting fatter than Americans because they have government sponsored health care? The B.S. is unbelievable.
    And not all illnesses are due to reckless living. People get cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer and heart attacks even if they live on Whole Foods products exclusively. There are genetic propensities for many diseases. And for gosh’s sake, we get into accidents! So much for corporate venality.

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  3. Dean C. Rowan

    And we get into accidental blogs.
    For the heck of it, nothing better to do on a summery afternoon, I skimmed HR3200, one of the (maybe dead in the water) proposals, a Proustian 1000+-page tome. That is, I Ctrl+f’d it, looking for “end of life” and “death” and “dead,” to see what might have been slipped in that could possibly be read as an open door for government cost-benefit determinations respecting Granny’s viability. Nuffin’. A bunch of stuff tracking Medicare, a checklist of information medical practitioners must provide. Yes, the B.S. is unbelievable.

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  4. Joe

    Oof. I suspect people won’t take Mackey to task on this the way they should, since there is a lot of truth to the banality that healthful living is healthful. And, after all, Americans love to blame fat people. But agreed — this has nothing to do with insurance or health care. If anything, it might cut in the other direction, so that we need “increased government spending and control” to remedy the free market’s failure to make nutritious foods available to poor people, inner city residents, and the like.

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  5. D

    I thought healthcare costs went up with longevity and therefore often with increased health. Don’t I recall reading somewhere that on balance smoking doesn’t increase healthcare expenses per person integrated over a human lifetime?

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  6. Andrew R.

    Hey Dean — a question from the beer-drinking airhead — how much is Green Flash at Whole Foods? I love that stuff! But it is so expensive.
    And yes, Mackey really stepped in it on this.

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  7. Joe

    Apropos of the Dean-Andrew exchange, I’m reminded that the most annoying thing about living in Minnesota (other than the ridiculous winters) might just be that you can’t buy beer at grocery stores. It’s one thing to make a separate trip to a liquor store for a bottle of gin, or to really stock up, but other than that it’s just an annoying hassle with no obvious purpose.

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  8. Dean C. Rowan

    Deemed a “new” product at WF, Green Flash IPA is ten bucks for six. Compare eleven at Andronico’s. We’re working on the new Berkeley Bowl West to carry it. WF also carries the 22 of the GF Imperial IPA ($5.29, maybe?) and their San Diego/Antwerp hybrid, Le Freaque ($7.29/22 oz. and well worth it for that special beer drinking occasion). Yes, they’re all pricey, and no, they’re not quite as resplendently yummy as that cask conditioned GF IPA we had at Triple Rock earlier this year, Andrew and Anna.
    Sorry, Joe. Drop into town and the beer’s on me.

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  9. Dean C. Rowan

    BevMo, six-pack of GF IPA, $9.99.

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