Whole Foods Has Bright Idea: a Fat Tax for Employees

Because let's be honest, that's pretty much what it is. In keeping with CEO John Mackey's nutty ideas about health care, Whole Foods will now begin discounting its food for employees--skinny employees, that is.

That's right. If employers are willing to prove their BMI, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure are satisfactory (not intrusive at all, right?) then they get 10 percent more off Whole Foods products. Oh, and by the way, you can't smoke your way down a size, because that's off limits, too, if you want the discount.

This seems more than a little unfair to us. Sure, the company can claim they're rewarding good behaviors, but any policy that discriminates like this is really punishing other employees for engaging in what Whole Foods sees as bad behaviors. And who is Whole Foods to decide what's good for employees' health? What if employees have weight problems, or problems with high cholesterol that are largely beyond their control? What if overweight employees are very healthy? What if employees that fall into the right BMI zone are not so healthy in other ways?

And for a libertarian like Mackey, this new policy seems a little...creepily controlling, to us.

Is Whole Foods Bad for the Planet?

Mother Jones asks the question in a fascinating new article, pointing out that even Walmart has a better track record on the environment than Whole Foods in ways that matter. An excerpt from the piece:

The company, which pulls in $4 billion a year, does try to promote itself as a firm that cares about the environment. Its official blog touts climate-related causes like rainforest preservation, waste reduction, and the awareness about carbon footprint of food. During my last visit to the store, I was urged to sign up to receive my shopping receipts via email, to save paper. But their focus is on what customers can do to reduce their impact—including in one post an admonition to "vote with your dollars" by shopping at local and at socially-conscious businesses.

The company ranked among the biggest purchasers of green power last year, but neither the company nor its CEO has advocated for environmental policies in line with the views held by their customer base.

Maybe progressives and folks who care about the environment need to rethink shopping at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods CEO Profile Reveals Disturbing Views on Unions, Climate

The New Yorker has an in-depth look at Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and his, er, wackiness. There's some choice stuff in there: did you know Mackey has compared unions to having a veneral disease? Yup, it's true. We can't include the quote here, since this is a family blog, but if you check out the article you'll find it there.

Another bit of information about Mackey: he's one of those climate change deniers. Which kind of makes you wonder about how environmentally conscious he really cares about being:

as he put it, “no scientific consensus exists” regarding the causes of climate change; he added, with a candor you could call bold or reckless, that it would be a pity to allow “hysteria about global warming” to cause us “to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” One would imagine that, on this score, many of his customers, to say nothing of most climate scientists, might disagree. He also said, “Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.”

Mackey also suggests that his company is not special or separate; that it's essentially similar to Kroger and Safeway. And as far as quality, that may be true. UFCW members know that Safeway's or Kroger's workers are every bit as dedicated as those at Whole Foods. But there's one big difference for workers: most Safeway and Kroger workers have a union, and Whole Foods workers? Well, they don't, thanks to Mackey's anti-union stance.