3/24/2012

Who owns YOUR favorite brand?

I'm a bit behind the times, but I finally watched Food, Inc.  Part of the film focuses on how some organic/natural food companies have sold out to bigger corporations.  Some of them did it for profit.  Others  so that they could market and distribute more effectively, thereby reaching a greater number of consumers and affecting a larger (beneficial) change to the current system of food production.  I was curious enough that I did a bit of my own research, as I do have my own list of favorite and semi-trusted brands.  Some of them I knew had been acquired by larger corporations.  Others were a surprise.  Here's what I found:

  • Back to Nature - Kraft
  • Bear Naked - Kelloggs
  • Ben and Jerrys - Unilever
  • Burt's Bees - Clorox
  • Cascadian Farm - General Mills
  • Earth's Best - Heinz
  • Kashi - Kelloggs (this one was a HUGE disappointment to me) 
  • Honest Tea - Coca-Cola
  • Horizon -Dean Foods 
  • Lightlife Foods (aka SmartDogs, etc) - ConAgra
  • Morningstar Farms - Kelloggs
  • Mother's - Quaker/Pepsi
  • Muir Glenn - General Mills
  • Naked (juice) - Pepsi
  • Odwalla Juice - Coca-Cola 
  • R.W. Knudsen - Smuckers
  • Santa Cruz Organic - Smuckers
  • Silk - Dean Foods
  • Stoneyfield Farms - Groupe Danone
  • Seeds of Change - M&M/Mars
  • Tom's of Maine - Colgate-Palmolive
I'm still trying to decide how I feel about this.  On one hand, I like a system that makes organic/natural foods affordable and accessible to more people.  But on the other hand, I hate knowing that when I buy, say, Burt's Bee's products, I'm supporting the chemical system behind Clorox.  Or that the dollars spent on my Kashi cereal go to finance the GMOs bought by Kelloggs.

Thoughts?

1 comment:

Jayne said...

I agree, some of them were really surprising--for me the two most surprising were Burt's Bees being owned by Clorox and Pepsi as the owner of Naked Juice. Seems a bit hypocritical, doesn't it??