The way big corporates feed Americans, like the way they energise Americans, has become one of the tragedies of our young 3^rd millennium- not just for Americans but for our worldwide.

In this context , John Mackey is a most unusual CEO of a fortune 500 company.  It’s quite rare for a founder to still be the CEO, but what makes John one of a kind is that he blogs on the sins of the market sector he is. See one extract footnoted where in plain speaking style we are warned that the American's diet is designed for disease, and if you take health costs into account may be the least economic on the planet!

John’s mission with his whole foods supermarket is to get Americans back on track to foods that are good for them as well as getting the farming of foods back to being sustainable.


Unfortunately, there is now so much noise in advertising  labels claiming to be organic that sometimes brands make up their own definitions, and paying a high price isn’t always an indicator of quality the customer assumes it is. Moreover foods that in my youth were no brainers for nutrition like fish are not so obvious in every case these days when you look how chemically polluted some fish have become

John has always had a corporate vision of cleaning up the future of foods which was made clear to prospective shareholders when his company first went public. One of the results is that like Danone he has some budgets at his discretion dedicated to long term sustainability of foods. It is these resources that have been leveraged in John’s design of a social business he calls wholeplanetfoundation.org

Whole planet typically connects microcredit and fair trade in some of the more strategic product fields that WholeFoods sources. Moreover John is one of the benchmark cases of taking his social business into the operations of his main business. Wholefoods staff are clearly motivated by the opportunities to take a time out to go and work on location with some of wholeplanet’s projects. At the end of the year, microcredit calendars are sold. And in many years there is a microcredit information month with leaflets and oppotrtunities to donate.

If globalization isn’t to spin into the worst of Orwellian scenarios then my family's research since 1984 suggests the 2010s are the last decade that turning round to a sustainable future can remain possible.

The world and America needs John Mackey;  needs other CEOs like Ray Anderson  of Interface who demonstrates that sustainability is like any quality highly profitable once you wholeheartedly invest in it not just in your organisation but by engaging sustainability leaders across the whole supply chain  


Having studied branding all my working life, I can tell you a facet that is not complicated. Its about what you let people commicate through you. It does involve power, which can be used to good or bad ends. Most advertising spots have become viciously unsustainable and we should be tutoring school chldren not to watch them, or to know how to analytically see through their braindraining. People need to take back the messages, restore local markets in global villages (real and virtual), map the wholeplanet the way nature connect whole truths through.

Yes We Can connect through leaders of purpose if we help each other race for sustainability with the urgency that the 2010s must awake to. 2012 will be one of the greatest tests when London's sustainability Olympics is also the opportunity for a social business summit the likes of which must open the BBC's eyes to sustainability as being every public broadcasters' number 1 world service responsibility. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8130130.stm
 

From John Mackey's Blog

Rather than increase governmental spending and control, what we need to do is address the root causes of disease and poor health.  This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for their own health.  Unfortunately many of our health care problems are self-inflicted with over 2/3 of Americans now overweight and 1/3 obese.  Most of the diseases which are both killing us and making health care so expensive-heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, which account for about 70% of all health care spending, are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal or no alcohol consumption, and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Over the past two decades, breakthrough scientific research by Colin Campbell, as documented in his book The China Study, and clinical medical experiences by many doctors including Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, John McDougall, Joel Fuhrman, and Neal Barnard have shown that a diet consisting of whole foods which are plant-based, nutrient dense, and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most of the degenerative diseases that are killing us, and becoming more and more expensive to treat through drugs and surgery.  We should be able to live healthy and largely disease free lives until we are well into our 90’s and even past 100 years of age

From the system supporters club supporting peer to peer understanding of John Mackey's perspectives for sustainability

In order to create a "Conscious Capitalism" worthy of the name, not only do entrepreneurs and managers of business enterprises need to be capable of incorporating the key principles of Conscious Businesses,

1. Deeper purpose
2. A commitment to the well-being of all stakeholders
3. Servant leadership


But they also need to understand capitalism itself.

In its ideal form, best articulated by Ludwig von Mises in Human Action, capitalism is the most humane system for coordinating human activity known to human kind.