You’ve seen them in the store.  You’ve probably even bought a lot of these products.  I have, and I continue to buy some of them.  I’m talking about packaged, organic products leading secret double lives, arranging trysts with high-end corporations in Washington, D.C. hotel rooms.  (Wait, wrong story.)

These are the products you pick up off the shelf to admire their charming, edgy names, and their packaging with pictures of wholesome food and places for which you already feel nostalgic.  You buy the products, thinking, “Not only is it organic, but if I buy this, I’ll surely be supporting a small company, right?  Who but a small company would make the package look like this, or call their product Naked?”

Well, Pepsi, for starters.  They own Naked Juice.

Yes, that Naked Juice.  Those winsome bottles sitting next to the Odwalla.  Of course they’re in competition; Odwalla’s owned by Coke.

When you look clearly at the Naked logo (other than the one above; that was just me having fun with Photoshop), the blue wavy stripe is meant to look like the wave in the Pepsi logo.  Oh, and check out what phrase the Naked website places next to the logo:

Nothing at all.  Except, possibly, that they’re owned by Pepsi.

The insidious wavy line is pretty unsurprising.  Marketing people love this stuff; they call it branding.  We’re the ones being branded it seems, as we line up like feedlot cattle at the cash register. 

Thanks to Bitten, the food blog of the New York Times, for leading me to a chart of which corporations own which small-seeming organic brands.  Also, check out what Anna of Going Against the Grain has to say about this topic, and another great link she includes.

What makes me mad is more than just the fact that small companies (and many of these do start out as small companies) get gobbled up by corporations who do their best to hide that change in ownership from the people who purchase these products, capitalizing on our values by deceiving us.  My frustration is that it feels like every time people generate momentum for something valuable, like small companies, local farmers’ markets, or organic food that meets high standards, corporations are quickly two steps ahead of us, trying to figure out how to beat us at our own game.  We wake up and say, “Given a choice and good quality, I’m going to buy a smaller, independent brand over a larger, more corporate one.”  It’s hard for a lot of people to go through the steps it takes to think like this.  And what happens then?  Corporations lull us back to sleep with marketing, with product names and images of meadows and organic rutabagas, and we’ve lost the momentum it took to wake up in the first place.

So, how do you get around it?  Well, you’re not going to put Pepsi out of business single-handedly.  You can make choices about which products you buy, and probably even continue buying some of the products you wish were still made by a small company.   Support the small, independent companies that are still small and independent, and contact them to tell them how much you value that.  It may help them decide not to sell out.

But the single best way to get around this is to buy fresh, simple, delicious ingredients from local markets, and to make and preserve your own food. Don’t want to buy Naked Juices anymore, even if they, er, have nothing to hide?  Buy a juicer (I got one at a yard sale for $1) and make your own; it’s fresher, more nutritious and a lot cheaper.  Plus, there are no little plastic bottles.  Don’t want to buy Muir Glen (owned by General Mills) canned tomatoes?  Buy a box of #2 tomatoes at the farmers’ market this summer and can your own.  Feel dirty learning that Horizon Organics is owned by Dean Foods, the same company that owns Land o’ Lakes?  Make your own yogurt; it’s easy and tastes great.  It’s also fun and rewarding to make things yourself. 

There is a world of difference between the farmers’ market and the supermarket.  If I buy tomatoes from Billy at the University District market, I’m really pretty sure that Billy’s not working undercover for Wal-Mart’s nightshade division.  Plus, nobody’s branding or marketing anything at the farmers’ market; the bins are labeled with unpretentious, straightforward signs like “Bulk Carrots, $1/lb.”

I’ll keep buying some of the corporate-owned organic products, and making my own whenever possible.  The products are convenient, they’re everywhere, and I go through a lot of canned tomatoes (although I’ve been buying other brands).  The key is to be a conscious skeptic rather than a branded consumer.  At least you know enough to question what you see on the package.  And if you see a font that looks charmingly like handwriting over an image of ripe fruit or robust carrots popping out of the ground on a sunny day, you’ll be able to control that impulse that says, “This has to be the kind of company I love.”  You’ll go home, you’ll Google it, and you’ll find out for sure.

Unless there are bunnies on the label.  Products with bunnies on the label are always wholesome, right?