¡Join the fight!
The past three months have been very exciting for me. I started out my journey researching organic foods after seeing the movie Food, Inc. followed by the movie FRESH. Every week, I go to two different health food stores and try to buy healthy, organic food that is independently owned. You all already know that I am not buying products from giant agribusinesses. I almost have my grocery shopping down to a science. I buy a lot of dried fruit, nuts, wild salmon, chicken & local vegetables. I actually feel myself getting cranky in the store when I find a brand owned by Heinz or Coca Cola. I usually speak to the manager when there is an overabundance of General Mills....ahem....Muir Glen foods on the shelves. Read more...
El Dragón passes through the looking glass into Target and tweets his way through a corporate, Madhatter's tea party in Louie Caroll's El Dragón in Wonderland.
Chapter One: Even the parking lot is strange.
Chapter Two: Looking for Archer Farms. (Worker tells El Dragón, "It's somewhere in Minnesota.")
Chapter Three: Drink the Local Minnesota-grown Pomegranate Juice!
Chapter Four: Butter Toffee Caramel Clusters are Grown on Archers Farm, You Know.
Chapter Five: Even the Sockeye Salmon comes from Minnesota Read more...
Shopping for natural foods can get confusing, and Fair Food Fight is here to help you sort the ins from the outs when buying organic and sustianable foods.
So, here are three ways that you can get smart about your food purchases. Get big. Get tough. Let's start taking down the corporate goliaths in your kitchen.
Three Ways to Get Smart About Natural Foods
1) Quiz at Discovery.com's Planet Green: Who Owns Your Food?
2) Most of that quiz was taken from Phil Howard's "Who Owns Organic Industry?" chart. Read up: It's changing all the time. Read more...
I want to flag a very weird little piece in Feedstuffs, a weekly Big Ag trade mag, that caught my eye this weekend: "Farmers unite in response to Pollan appearance at University of Wisconsin this week." Read more...
Archer Farms potato salad sold at Target is being recalled due to "undeclared milk" (which means, milk should have been mentioned on the allergens list and wasn't -- the product is not being recalled due to outbreak or contamination.)
After my trip to Target where I learned that Archer Farms was located in my home state of Minnesota, I wanted to know how this recall effected the Archers on Archer Farms, so I called Target to find out more. Here's a transcript of my call:
One of my biggest pet peaves is "farmoflaging". You've seen it. A big corporation starts a private label food company and uses the word "farm" in the brand name, camouflaging itself as just another lil ol' mom and pop farm stand down the road a piece.
There are various culprits. We've written about the near-monopoly United Natural Foods brand's "Woodstock Farms," before. That's got to be one of the worst. "Woodstock Farms." A perfectly named crypto-farm, evoking those Joni Mitchel lyrics that are so important to the boomer generation (wake me when it's over): Read more...
Over the past month, I have spent a lot of time in my local health food store. The co-op doesn't begin until November, and I am buying almost 100% organic, free range, etc.etc. I have found some really great organic brands that I feel good about giving my dollar to. I am buying my dairy from Organic Valley. They have a nice variety of cheeses, sour cream, milk, cream, powdered milk, cottage cheese & a line of meats. They even have juice box sized milks that I can bring to work with me for breakfast. (added bonus is that they are from a cooperative of farms and have very strict guidelines for their farmers) Read more...
Hey Natural Foods Vendors,
El Dragón here, and I have the word of 2009 for you: Traceability.
Being able to introduce us to your Real Live Farmers differentiates you from the B.S. No Farmer In Sight Companies. (For a real laugh, click "Our Family" at that link.)So do it. Make it possible fo rus to track your products back to your farmers.
Because guess what? It's the Age of Interactivity. Time to update your sites, make em 21st Century Friendly.
When we Food Fighters rip the masks off corporate food Goliaths, we do this for a number of reasons. We want to:
* expose the secret identities of Goliaths posing as groovy little Davids
* show exactly who benefits when you buy Goliath's food (Naked Juice is owned by Pepsi; Kraft owns Boca Burgers, etc)
* reveal where our food truly comes from
For an example of that third point, take a look at this thoughtful article by Brandon Keim:
Fast Food: Another Name for Corn (Wired)
The lede: Read more...
Professor Phil Howard gets the third degree from Ojo del Tigre
Ever seen one of those charts of who owns the organic industry? If you haven't, you should (and they're right here). They are the product of research by Phil Howard, assistant professor in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies at Michigan State. A few years ago, Phil decided to unmask the massive consolidation of the organic industry, with major food corporations and investment firms gobbling up independent companies. His charts certainly took the co-op world by storm, summing up what we've been seeing on the shelves for awhile.
