The voucher is good for $20 worth of merchandise for only $10.

They say beauty exists in the relationship between a “whole” organism and its parts. And with today’s deal, lettuce show you the natural simplicity of healthy goods, courtesy of Whole Foods Market: Pay $10 for $20 to spend on high-quality natural and organic products. Whether you want local produce; freshly prepared foods; gluten-free goodies; or you simply want to avoid artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated fats, Whole Foods Market has you covered.

Whole Foods is donating 5% of the sale price to their brand new organization, the Whole Food Foundation. Their goal is to improve children’s nutrition through programs with school and parents.

Unfortunately, there is a limit of one voucher per person. But If you buy the voucher, share the deal using a special link, and 3 of your friends buy the voucher following your link, then yours ends up being free.

As of right now, over 269,000 people have bought the deal. Whole Foods is the first national grocer to offer a daily deal with either LivingSocial or Groupon.

In the event your memory isn’t so good, I’ll refer you to our own David Utter, who detailed how Mackey used a pseudonym in online forums while taking potshots at Wild Oats.  An important detail: that story broke about four months ago.

So the board of directors at Whole Foods isn’t exactly quick on its feet, but at least it reached a reasonable conclusion.  According to David Kesmodel, “The new code bars top executives and directors from posting messages about Whole Foods, its competitors or vendors on Internet forums that aren’t sponsored by the natural-foods chain.”

One can’t help but wonder if other companies will enact similar policies; the embarrassing situation created by Mackey is something that no one will want to repeat.  And this development seems to fit with a report indicating that roughly half of businesses with a certain type of filtering software block MySpace or Facebook.

Oh, well.  In vaguely related news, Brownstoner reports that Whole Foods apparently got around to fixing a fence after it “was in disrepair for several weeks, leading Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum to say the open-access brownfield was potentially harmful to neighborhood kids.”

FTC Angered By CEO’s Yahoo Forum Posts

There is a saying that goes, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” The anonymity available to people allows them to be something they aren’t, sometimes with good reason, sometimes not.

Using anonymity to criticize a competitor has been a more common tactic as Internet marketing moves into prominence. Ripping someone else represents a questionable strategy at best, with a lot to lose if one becomes exposed.

The Wall Street Journal said John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, posted under the pseudonym ‘Rahodeb’, between 1999 and 2006. An FTC filing against Whole Foods detailed some of those posts.

In one, Rahodeb questioned why anyone would consider buying shares in Wild Oats in 2005. He also criticized former Wild Oats CEO Perry Odak for a perceived lack of business acumen.

The FTC recommended against the takeover in its filing. Meanwhile, Mackey is unrepentant about his posts. He accused the FTC of “picking on us” on his blog.