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KamaAina

(78,249 posts)
Tue May 26, 2015, 06:32 PM May 2015

Big Food trying a big hoax

http://jimhightower.com/node/8629

Near my home in Austin, Texas, there’s an old refurbished motel with a keep-it-real attitude that is expressed right on its iconic marquee: “No additives, No preservatives, Corporate-free since 1938.”

The 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 McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Taco Bell, preferring upstart, independent outfits with names like “The Corner,” “Caleb’s Kola,” and “US Taco Co.”

But, uh-oh, guess who owns those little alternatives? Right – McDonald’s, 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.”
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Archae

(46,317 posts)
1. I'd be willing to bet many "organic" brands are this way too.
Tue May 26, 2015, 06:37 PM
May 2015

Doesn't General Mills put out an "organic" brand?

Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
2. You don't have to bet, many are.
Tue May 26, 2015, 06:42 PM
May 2015

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)
3. As are many craft* beers.
Tue May 26, 2015, 06:46 PM
May 2015

Blue Moon = Molson Coors. Shock Top = InBev Anheuser-Busch. And so on.

BrotherIvan

(9,126 posts)
5. Annie's organic bought by General Mills
Tue May 26, 2015, 07:31 PM
May 2015

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)
7. Of course. Organic is WAY more profit per unit sold.
Wed May 27, 2015, 12:20 PM
May 2015

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.

lpbk2713

(42,753 posts)
6. Some times I don't know whether to get fitted for a tinfoil hat ...
Tue May 26, 2015, 07:43 PM
May 2015



but I find myself thinking more often lately corporate Amurka is out to get us any way they can.

AZ Progressive

(3,411 posts)
8. Come on, what do you expect from sociopathic business leaders?
Wed May 27, 2015, 12:26 PM
May 2015

These guys are master con-artists. You can't keep a con from being brazenly deceptive.

MineralMan

(146,286 posts)
9. As interest in organic foods grows, major companies
Wed May 27, 2015, 12:27 PM
May 2015

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.

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