AUSTIN, Texas — John Mackey, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market here, said he has some regrets about last year’s Wild Oats acquisition, a merger of the two largest so-called “super-natural” retailers that triggered an antitrust investigation and an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. “If I could go back in time, we wouldn’t have done the Wild Oats acquisition,” he told journalist Samuel Fromartz in an interview posted this week on Fromartz’ ChewsWise blog (www.chewswise.com). “We spent tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, we’ve been investigated, it’s been highly disruptive. I didn’t realize it would cause so much grief.” The controversial Mackey — who openly criticized the Federal Trade Commission on his company’s website and secretly posted on a stock message board about Wild Oats for years — went on to say that from a “business perspective,” it’s too early to tell whether the merger will be an overall success, although “we’re pretty happy so far.”

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