There’s a kindly older gentleman, Bill, who often bags my groceries at the Whole Foods in Newton, MA, where I usually shop. For a number of years, we used to banter about the company and its stock. “This is a great company,” he would say. “They treat us well. I just keep buying the stock.”

Three years ago, when it looked like there might be a recession, I asked Bill, “Are you worried Whole Foods stock might have trouble during a recession?”

“Oh no,” Bill said. “People want the quality we have. They’ll shop here regardless of whether there’s a recession. I think the stock will be fine.” And he was right, the stock kept climbing, almost like an Internet stock during the late 1990s.

Over the last year, I’ve confined our conversation to the weather and how busy the store is or isn’t, since I know the stock isn’t something Bill will probably want to talk much about. It’s gone from a high of 80 about 18 months ago down to about 39 currently. And it could go down a lot further.

The reason I bring all this up is because of the unfolding fiasco around Whole Foods’ CEO, John Mackey. It turns out he spent eight years touting Whole Foods stock on a Yahoo stock site, using a pseudonym. In doing so, he terribly let down Bill, and many other people associated with Whole Foods.

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal detailed his questionable behavior (“bizarre” is the way a former Securities and Exchange Commission official describes it). I would add few other adjectives as well: sneaky, hypocritical, inappropriate, and obsessive. Yesterday, we learned that the SEC is investigating whether Mackey’s behavior violates securities regulations, possibly based on his use of insider information to promote the stock.

(Believe me, it takes a lot more potential wrongdoing to get the SEC to investigate a major corporation than it does to get state and federal regulators to investigate a small farm.)

The revelation does help clarify an encounter I had with Mackey a few months back, when I requested comment from Whole Foods about possible contamination of its food, in connection the pet food poisoning scandal. The response I received was this: “Due to an article that was written by Business Week magazine in the recent past, our company leadership will no longer allow any information or interviews to Business Week or businessweek.com.” I was told by an apologetic Whole Foods public relations person that “our company leadership” referred to a direct order from Mackey.

I still don’t know which article Mackey was referring to, but I think it’s now clear it was some article Mackey felt hurt the Whole Foods’ stock price. The stock price clearly took precedence over many things in Mackey’s life, including informing and reassuring customers about an emerging food contamination issue.

In my view, Mackey has terribly damaged Whole Foods’ image as a guardian of the food chain. Image, and the trust resulting from that image, is a big part of Whole Foods’ connection with its customers, and with the company’s success over the years.

The revelation that he was spending substantial portions of his time, and energy, touting the company’s stock, makes him just another corporate executive. Actually, worse than most corporate executives. I’ve met many, and while they obviously care about their stock prices, few would let some irritation about that matter keep them from speaking with a major publication, nor would they become so distracted by the company’s stock price that they would spend precious time on Internet chat boards with all the hucksters and promoters who hang out at those places.

Trust is what is driving the current trend by increasing numbers of consumers to purchase food directly from local farmers. Or maybe I should say a lack of trust in the conventional food system.

Trust is what is pushing more consumers to go directly to local dairies for raw milk. The assault on trust is what makes the campaign against raw milk producers in New York and Pennsylvania so sinister. The regulators hope that if they can call into question the quality of small dairies producing raw milk, they can undermine growing consumer trust in raw milk. Fortunately, many consumers are becoming sophisticated enough in their marketplace appraisals to see the real intent of the games being played; Dawn Sharts reports she’s actually getting inquiries about purchasing raw milk from consumers who have seen the state’s press release accusing her of producing tainted milk.

Back to Mackey, though: If I were him, I’d think about trying to sell WFMI short.