Past, Present and Future of Food

by John Mackey, March 13, 2007 | Permalink

As part of a recent public dialogue with Michael Pollan, I presented a slide show on the Past, Present and Future of Food. This slide show, as well as a link to a recorded version of the presentation and subsequent discussion with Pollan, are included in this blog post.

As an introduction to this material, I am sharing part of a monthly newsletter authored by Michael Strong, CEO and Chief Visionary for FLOW, a social entrepreneurial group I co-founded. He speaks to the events leading up to the conversation with Michael Pollan in Berkeley on February 27, 2007, as well as the greater meaning of the ongoing dialogue. Strong’s article adeptly references the linkage between this current presentation and my previous blog post on Conscious Capitalism. I invite you to read it with those things in mind while I work on an expanded, written version of my presentation to be posted on my blog in the near future.

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Conscious Capitalism: Creating a New Paradigm for Business

by John Mackey, November 9, 2006 | Permalink

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been very gratified and impressed with your responses to my dialogue exchange with Michael Pollan over the last six months. The following lengthy essay is something I have been working on for several months; the ideas have been gestating for many years. The topic is Conscious Capitalism and I encourage you to read this material with your mind open to the possibilities inherent in these ideas. The essay is long and it may take extended time and concentration on your part to read. However, I think the ideas I articulate here are important ideas and they deserve to be read by an intelligent and critical audience.
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Detailed Reply to Pollan Letter

by John Mackey, June 26, 2006 | Permalink

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your recent letter to me. I appreciate the fact that you wrote the letter in an overall positive tone. I want to respond to your letter with an equally positive tone and match your efforts in “constructive criticism.” I’ll take your letter section by section, with my responses below each section. I will then conclude by writing about some of the new initiatives Whole Foods Market will be beginning very soon, which I hope you’ll find exciting. I know that I’m very excited about them.

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Michael Pollan’s Response to Whole Foods Market

by John Mackey, June 26, 2006 | Permalink

Last month, John Mackey, the president of Whole Foods, wrote me a letter (also published on the Whole Foods Web site), taking issue with some of the points I have made about his grocery chain-in my book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” in my column for TimesSelect and in some of my public remarks. What follows is my response to Mr. Mackey.
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An Open Letter to Michael Pollan

by John Mackey, May 26, 2006 | Permalink

Michael Pollan’s new book The Omnivore’s Dilemma has been near the top of the best seller’s list since it was published in April, and it deserves to be. This is mostly an excellent book which I strongly recommend people read, along with Peter Singer and Jim Mason’s new book The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. Both books are real wakeup calls about how our food is being produced in the United States today, and how our food choices potentially can make a positive difference in the world. While Singer and Mason have many nice things to say about Whole Foods Market in their book (especially regarding our approach to improving farm animal welfare), Pollan is far more critical and skeptical about many of Whole Foods Market’s practices, both in his book and in subsequent interviews about the book in the media. Unfortunately Pollan did not carefully research Whole Foods Market’s actual practices while writing his book so many of his comments about us are either inaccurate or misinformed. The letter that follows is one I gave to Pollan in person on May 25th after I spent a delightful hour and a half in productive dialog with him. (I have also included an additional section called “Creating a Third Way with Country Natural Beef” that was emailed to Pollan a few days after our meeting.) I found him to be highly intelligent, a good listener, open minded, thoughtful, and idealistic—all in all quite an interesting and impressive person. I came away from my dialog with him convinced that we will likely become proactive allies working together in our joint quest to reform “industrial agriculture.” I only wish we had met and had this productive dialog before he wrote his book. Unfortunately we didn’t and as result many misunderstandings are now circulating about Whole Foods Market as a result of his book and recent interviews. This letter is an attempt to address those misunderstandings.
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