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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBig Food trying a big hoax
http://jimhightower.com/node/8629The good news is that more and more businesses across the country are adopting this attitude, providing a buy-local, un-corporate, anti-chain alternative for customers. Food shoppers and restaurant goers, for example, have made a huge shift in recent years away from the likes of McDonalds, Pepsi, and Taco Bell, preferring upstart, independent outfits with names like The Corner, Calebs Kola, and US Taco Co.
But, uh-oh, guess who owns those little alternatives? Right McDonalds, PepsiCo, and Taco Bell. Leave it to ethically-challenged, profiteering monopolists to grab such value-laden terms as genuine and honest, empty them of any authenticity, then hurl them back at consumers as shamefully-deceptive marketing scams.
In Huntington Beach, California, US Taco Co. poses as a hip surfer haunt, with a colorful Day of the Dead Mexican skull as its logo. The airy place peddles lobster tacos and other fancifuls at $3 or $4 each very un-fast-foody. Nowhere is it whispered that this is a Big Chain outlet, created by a group of Taco Bell insiders. They even usurped the enterprising word entrepreneur, stripped it of its outsider connotation, and twisted it into a corporate vanity, calling themselves intrapreneurs.
Archae
(46,317 posts)Doesn't General Mills put out an "organic" brand?
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Just as the big companies started buying up the small upstart vegetarian foods companies when those started to gain in popularity.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Blue Moon = Molson Coors. Shock Top = InBev Anheuser-Busch. And so on.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Ben & Jerry's bought and the formula changed. On and on. You can bet that if it's in a big box store (or even Whole Foods) it is probably a big corporation.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)You're targeting consumers who are willing to "pay a little more". Just turn that "little more" a bit higher, and it's pure profit.
It's not like organic can't use herbicides and insecticides like crazy. You can even mutate the hell out of your "organic" crop.
xfundy
(5,105 posts)Handy chart here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/organic-brands/
lpbk2713
(42,753 posts)but I find myself thinking more often lately corporate Amurka is out to get us any way they can.
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)These guys are master con-artists. You can't keep a con from being brazenly deceptive.
MineralMan
(146,286 posts)are either entering that market or buying smaller companies that have already established brands. Why wouldn't they? They'll try to sell food to everyone. The question to ask is whether the products are truly organic, not who owns the brand, I think. If the food is organic, it's organic, whoever sells it.