“We sell a bunch of junk.”

Those are not words you’d expect to hear from any corporate CEO, let alone John Mackey, the iconoclastic founder of Whole Foods. Yet that’s exactly how he described the nutritional value of much of Whole Foods’ merchandise in a Wall Street Journal column.

Reading those words was somewhat surreal for me, as was the article’s headline: “Whole Foods Tries Health Push.” Isn’t health what Whole Foods is all about?

Apparently not–or at least not recently. Mackey wants to re-embrace Whole Food’s “original emphasis” and reposition the chain “as a champion of healthy living in a return to its natural-foods roots.” In addition to its product revamp, the company is developing a number of new initiatives including an employee wellness program, customer education effort, and even in-store reference materials.

I’m no stranger to a loss of focus, and I know it can happen to the best of companies. But this is somewhat of a head scratcher. True, Mackey was distracted by Whole Foods’ 2007 acquisition of rival Wild Oats and the drawn-out antitrust battle he had to fight with federal regulators. But the context of that battle was about Whole Foods supposedly cornering the market for organic foods. Perhaps Mackey could have convinced the FTC to back down by inviting them into the store for some “prime beef, crusty white bread and rich chocolate cake,” as the article described. Or maybe Snickers and a Red Bull.

Just goes to show you how easy it is to veer off course, particularly when you’re battling sales declines in a rotten economy. But if a company founded on healthy food, named for healthy food, and fighting an expensive public battle with the government about its supposed dominance of the healthy food industry can end up peddling, well, a bunch of junk, it’s pretty depressing.

Sigh. I think I’ll have some ice cream.