Buyer Beware: Who Your Dollars Are Really Supporting
Owned by Heinz now...
I ran across an excellent article today on AlterNet (alternet.org). Usually, I am not one to simply phone it in and copy and paste an article onto this site, and I won’t do that, but I will paraphrase the article a bit and urge you to click here to go to the source article.
The writer, Andrea Whitfill, is a kindred spirit in that she also reads lots of labels to see whence our consumer products come (wow, not often I get to correctly use whence in a sentence). This annoying habit has plagued me for years. So much so, that my boyfriend won’t buy toilet tissue without checking with me about the producer and whether “we” support them or not.
However, sometimes there are no good choices.
Ms. Whitfill decided to look beyond the labels, as many a label is downright misleading, to see who was really behind some of those “crunchy” eco-sustainable-green brands that we (suckers) have come to love and support religiously (but in an atheistic way). And for many of us that think of ourselves as Earth-lovers, we may not want to met the “man behind the curtain.”
In summary, so as to encourage you to read the source, almost every company that you like to think of as “small” or “family-owned” or “natural and organic” is in reality a small subsidiary of a much, much larger corporation.
Clorox owns the Burt’s Bees brand. Tom’s of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive. Coca-Cola bought Odwalla (also HonesTea) and Pepsi owns Naked. And there’s more in the article, and in the graphic below. Click here to see larger version.
The only upside to Big Corporations owning those specialty brands is that yes, those brands can now reach a bigger stage in the major grocery chains, so maybe more people will make the choice to go organic or natural (if those brands are still organic and natural — I have a hard time trusting that a major corporation wouldn’t tweak a “natural” brand to cut costs).
And maybe I am too much of a Pollyanna here, but maybe the parent corporations will learn something from their granola-lovin’ stepchildren…eh, probably not.
AlterNet, organic food, sustainable agriculture, food processors, natural food, health food brands, Clorox, Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Colgate-Palmolive, Coca-Cola, Odwalla, HonesTea, Pepsi, Naked juices, major corporations
October 31st, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I really like the look of your template. Did it cost a lot to buy or did you build it yourself?