A little known provision nestled in the momentous healthcare bill passed this week means a big change for all those who eat out.  Over the next year, the FDA is mandated to write rules that will require calorie counts on menus of all restaurant chains with 20+ locations.

It turns out that reinforcing calorie counts with the 2000 calories a day recommendation is most effective.  Let’s hope the FDA takes note.

Studies are still being done on the effectiveness of this approach, with early ones showing no change to a 6% reduction in purchased calories.  Either way, giving consumers more information can only be a good thing.

Calorie count laws have already passed in New York City, Seattle, and California. This legislation is a great example of popular local initiatives bubbling up to the national level.

Update: And I suspect this is why the Restaurant Association was lobbying against the healthcare bill.

While few people believed that the a Whole Foods boycott would hold, or that complete economic collapse of the company would follow.  While Mackey’s ill-received Wall Street Journal op-ed may not be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, it may well be the first crack in a damn that is doomed to fail.  Today that crack got a little bit wider.

CtW Investment Group — the investor arm for unions including the United Food and Commercial Workers — said Mackey damaged the upscale supermarket’s reputation when he published an Aug. 12 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying, among other things, that people “have no intrinsic right to health care.”

And then threw down the gauntlet:

“The board must act immediately to address the burgeoning crisis caused by Mr. Mackey’s undisciplined behavior,” the investor group told Whole Foods director John Elstrott in a letter this week. The group hinted it might wage a proxy battle next spring if the board is “unable or unwilling to hold management accountable.”

Can Whole Foods slow the coming flood?

Senator Edward Kennedy passed away early this morning.  It is hard to cover the breadth of issues that he was a leader on.  Obviously health care and universal coverage were incredibly important to him, as were immigration and civil rights. As was feeding the hungry:

He several times spearheaded legislation to raise the minimum wage and, in the early 1970s, wrote the law creating Meals on Wheels, which delivers meals to seniors. He was influential in reforming immigration laws and in expanding Head Start programs.

The Guardian asked me to weigh in on the Whole Foods Boycott that has been circulating the interwebs. Please go check out the op-ed I wrote for them (and I can’t take credit for the “rotten core” line - that was the editors, not me).

Mostly, I try to argue the following:

1. Whole Food consumers have a right to take issue with the company because:
   1. Whole Foods actively courts progressives, and portray themselves as progressive to their customers
   2. customers put up with, and often defend, Whole Foods’ higher prices because many believe that they are making ethically conscious purchases by frequenting Whole Foods stores;
   3. it is well known that their lefty clientele commonly see the health care debate in ethical terms
2. Mackey only has the bully pulpit he has because of the success of his company, therefore it is reasonable to take into account issues he advocates for when shopping at Whole Foods
3. Therefore the Whole Foods statement on Mackey’s stance is not reflective of Whole Foods positions falls flat with the concerns of their customers and will be construed a non-apology
4. This dust up doubly hurts the Whole Foods image because it also brings up Whole Foods anti-union practices, practices that up until this point were not widely reported on.  This can lead to a “Whole Foods is no better than Wal Mart” argument by detractors

The Washington Post’s Ylan Mui does a round up of all the online activity bubbling up against Whole Foods, while on their opinion pages, we are oh so shocked to see conservative Kathleen Parker cheering CEO Mackey on. On the other side of the fence, Cameron Scott at the San Francisco Chronicle thinks Mackey’s real message is “Let them eat organic cake.”

CNN Money’s Parija Kavilanz points out the reason why this is such a big deal is that Whole Foods’ Mackey conservative free market zeal is horribly out of touch with his lefty consumers. Meanwhile, Loren Steffy over at the Houston Chronicle points out that Mackey’s vision for healthcare is really more of the same.

And the Economist thinks Mackey totally stepped in it, but since he’s propogating their free market evangelist ideals, they hope he keeps it up.

Seems the CEO of Whole Foods really stepped in it this past week, when he came out with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal disparaging healthcare reform. Mackey came off as a died in the wool right-winger parroting Fox News talking points:

While we clearly need health-care reform, 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.

As Jusiper points out, the man clearly doesn’t understand his customer base if he thinks that carrying water for Limbaugh is a good way to burnish his brand.

Not very smart for a company that depends almost entirely on wealthy Democrats who are willing to pay five dollars for a six ounce carrot soda. Come on, you can do it, boycott them for at least a week and discover how much money you can save at Trader Joe’s.

This mess prompted several progressive activists to engage in the fight, calling on people to boycott Whole Foods, which in turn, caused Whole Foods to release a non-apology apology.

Really, I would have thought that Mackey was smarter than this. Hope Trader Joes appreciates the lesson to be learned here.