...That is the title of an article in the current Vegnews...... Another reason to avoid processed foods is that many vegan companies have been bought out by mega-corporations that have less than stellar reputations..... Lightlife- they make the gimmelean foods and smart chilli and all that....it says they are owned by conagra - in 2002 conagra recalled almost 19 million pounds of beef due to potential E.coli contamination and also owns companies such as Hebrew National, Chef boyardee..... Cascadian Farms and Muir Glen- owned by general mills BOCA is owned by kraft. Kraft is owned by Altria, formerly known as PHILLIP MORRIS. Odwalla is owned by Coca-Cola - coca cola has been implicated in the murder of labor activists in Columbia, not to mention they have contracts with local schools to provide the kids with sugary nutritionally deficient drinks... White Wave (Silk soy products) - owned by Dean foods. Dean is one of the largest dairy companies and makes several misleading claims about the health benefits of dairy, including extolling its weightloss benefits. These companies main investors include Phillip Morris, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, General Electric, McDonalds, ETC.... I guess the big dissapointment for me is Lightlife and Silk...Boca is somewhat dissapointing, but I generally steer clear of things like that and just use Tofu and every once in a while eat lightlife chilli......I am not saying whether you should stop buying these products or not. I am still seeing how I feel about this. Silk is my favorite soy drink, but dang..Dean owns them. What do yall think? This is all in more detail in the january/february edition of VegNews.
I see a couple ways to look at it: one: the need /desire has grown to the point where mass market companies will make/distribute the veg friendly/natural products. this is, mostly, good two: they are fall back territory: you only use them when you cannot find local. also a bit of a good. I watched a few companies get big, and I have to say I'm glad they did it. (Celestial Seasonings comes to mind, Ben & Jerry's, White Wave) I also know it's hard to surrender your $$ to yet another corporation. More of an environmental/ globalization issue to me. remember, once a company is on the stock exchange they have NO say in who buys the stock.
the mama is dead on. the fact that there is now a growing market for these products is very important. no, i don't like supporting large corporations and their greed BUT it is important (for the sake of the planet) for more farms to turn to organic farming methods. and the more people that make the switch to organic products, the more people that will start making even greater changes to things like: reducing waste (buying more fruits/vegetables as opposed to the gross waste of packaging.....and hey, it's now "hip" to bring your own grocery bag ) composting kitchen scraps, gardening, recycling, etc. maybe eventually to more local products, which is very important. basically i think the more commonplace organic foods become, the more consumers start to connect again to our food supply (and ultimately, nature). this is definitely a good thing.
