Whole Foods shares up on news of more whole foods

Immediately, investors cheered, sending the stock up $3.88, or 15.6%, to $28.70 by the end of trading today. In intraday trading, the stock eclipsed its 52-week high. And what was even more interesting than a run up in the stock's price was news that CEO John Mackey, whose new diet has him off refined fats (and looking trim and slim, if you were wondering -- no word on how it's impacted his famously bombastic mood) has decried the abundance of "junk" in his company's stores. He plans to change that, effective now.

Mackey told investors, "We sell a bunch of junk. We've decided if Whole Foods doesn't take a leadership role in educating people about a healthy diet, who the heck is going to do it?" As I wrote on DailyFinance, Whole Foods has long taken a leadership role in ridding its shelves of the excoriated ingredient of the moment -- whether that was partially hydrogenated vegetable oil in cookies or bleach in baby diapers. The emerging trend in food is to remove refined ingredients; sugar, flour, and fats, a move toward whole foods. If any store is positioned to take advantage of this trend, Whole Foods has got to be the one.