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PORTSIDE CULTURE

"BIG FOOD” TRIES TO LOOK GOOD  
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Alicia Kennedy
December 12, 2024
The Bittman Project
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_ Most people do their food shopping solely at supermarkets or
grocery stores where they find only those options that big food
corporations allow them. Today the top five food retail companies
account for about half of the market. _

If the top-heavy, ultra-consolidated food industry decides to offer
us a few organic options, is that really a good thing?, Mélanie
Villette/Unsplash+

 

For most people in the United States, all food comes from Big Food.
While some 12% of Americans do shop at their local farmers markets
part of the time, the remaining 88% do their food shopping solely at
supermarkets or grocery stores where they find only those options that
big food corporations allow them. If you want proof of this, just
consider the fact that one in four grocery dollars
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this country is spent at Walmart._ _Today the top five food retail
companies — Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Ahold Delhaize, and Amazon —
account for about half of the market. Meanwhile, there was a 30%
decrease in the number of independent US grocers from 1993 to 2019_._

Is this as dire a situation as it might seem? There are organic brands
at most supermarkets, after all. But Big Food is moving to take over
that part of the market, as well. For example, a week after the 2024
U.S. presidential election, Modern Retail reports
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Walmart is betting big on the “better for you” food category with
a major push on items like Poppi probiotic sodas and Soom tahini. The
massive chain wants to maintain their recent success with
higher-income shoppers who might be looking for these products. With
this move to bring even more people into their grocery fold by
offering organic options, Walmart is modeling the same strategies that
Big Food has been using for years by acquiring organic brands
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order to consolidate their power. 

All of this consolidation hasn’t led to less hunger, better
nutrition, or safer food for a majority of people. In 2023, 13.5
percent
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households in the United States experienced food insecurity. Nearly
half of the adult population
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deficient in certain micronutrients, too, because of an over-reliance
on processed foods that lack necessary nutrition. Food contamination
has also become routine. Buyers of frozen waffles
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for example, haven’t been spared recalls whether they’re at Dollar
Tree, Walmart, or Whole Foods buying 365 brand, and shoppers picking
up prepackaged salads
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featured some readymade grilled chicken for a healthy lunch at
Aldi’s or Wegmans were all at risk. Recalls like these reveal the
illusion that a high income level will protect one’s food from
contamination, as well as that a higher cost or more friendly label
provides “better for you” food.

With corporate consolidation like this, a false sense of security,
nutrition, and perhaps even sourcing equity is baked into the price.
And yet consolidation continues. How does that change?

A more systemic look at this problem reveals that there have been
massive political and economic machinations throughout recent history
that have determined how, where, and what food is grown, with little
consideration for ecology or nutrition. The sociological theory of
“food regimes” was established first in 1989 by Harriet Friedmann
and Philip McMichael, and it has greatly expanded over the decades
since. These “regimes” have effectively only been in service to
power and profit.

This theory characterizes a first food regime taking place from 1870
to the 1930s, during which time monocultures were imposed in colonies
to produce what the imperialist forces wanted to consume, like sugar
and coffee; a second food regime came into place after the second
World War, from the 1950s to the ’70s, when surplus food “aid”
and the Green Revolution acted as soft power abroad, creating
dependence upon larger nations; and there’s the idea that more
recently, we have been in what’s called a “corporate food
regime.” This era is all about deregulation of finance, devaluing of
labor, and the corporate consolidation that has been so easily
maintained and expanded in the U.S. 

Neoliberal economics that prioritize the private over the public
sector and allow for lax regulation have created conditions in which
the only way people feel they have agency in their food consumption is
through “market choices.” As Dr. Julie Guthman
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in her 2011 book _Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits
of Capitalism [[link removed]]_, “Neoliberal economic
policies have contributed to the heightened inequalities that have
made cheap food a necessity and exacerbated the class and racial
resentments that manifest in arguments about ‘good food.’”
People with limited financial means and time try to make the best
choices they can, despite the deck being stacked against their health
and for corporate profit. Cheap food essentially subsidizes low wages,
while harming workers in meat processing
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and fast food
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This is why “personal choice” being a true possibility for
changemaking when it comes to the food system becomes such an empty
notion. 

These major corporations also know how to absorb any challenge—and
they have the capital to do so. Guthman tells me the pattern is for
the corporations to spot competition and then find a way to profit
from both it and their conventional, low-cost options: Thus, the
organic-labeled option is right next to the conventional, but they
both generate profit for the same company in the end. Similar tactics
are being taken with alternative meats, where large meat-processing
companies are putting money into plant-based products in order to
profit from every angle. “Here we see these big, big food companies
getting involved in alternative protein,” Guthman explains. “So
are they going to try to squash it? Are they just going to do what
they do with organic, have it side by side? Sure, we’re going to
give the consumers their choice. They can have meat, or they can have
plant-based meat, or they can have some mix, because that’s what
some of them are doing. That’s the bet-hedging.”

Now corporations are also learning they should absorb culturally coded
snack foods. PepsiCo recently acquired Siete Foods—which makes
almond flour tortillas, grain-free tortilla chips, and salsas—for
$1.2 billion. “The addition of Siete not only builds out PepsiCo’s
better-for-you portfolio, but it also allows it to tap into growing
demand for culturally authentic products,” according to FoodDive
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Errol Schweizer of the Checkout Grocery Update
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of Siete Foods while working at Whole Foods, believes this is a good
thing, because it will allow for easier access to these foods for more
people. “If you want people to eat healthier, until you have the
means of production and distribution,” he says, “it’s best for
every gas station and Dollar General to provide this choice.
Obviously, it’s not ideal: we wish we could have freshly prepared,
easy to prepare meals. But we’re so far away from that. I think you
know, what I want to talk about here is just like, ‘What would a
just transition look like?’”

Some would find this position naive. Raj Patel, author of _Stuffed
and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
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professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of
Texas-Austin, calls this approach “harm reduction,” because at the
scale of production and power that these corporations have, there is
always a level of exploitation. 

“Big food is only possible through labor exploitation, and that’s
the thing that never sort of features in this story,” Patel tells
me. “I’m not seeing [the Garza family, owners of Siete Foods]
necessarily making sure that everyone, the loaders on the docks, are
now able to afford their housing here in Austin, and even if they
were, that sort of charity approach is not how you want a good system
to look: You want dignity by right, rather than by sort of noblesse.
This idea of big food being able to transform while still remaining
big food is a contradiction in terms. You can’t do it. I think it
can do less harm, and I think that is the only way of phrasing
it.” 

So what is a better option for creating change in the food industry?
As Guthman writes in her latest book, _The Problem with Solutions:
Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food
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may be better addressed by those social movements and practitioners
who have been in it for the long haul, who have studied the problem,
developed treatments, and whose attention to the biophysical realities
of food and farming is something to learn from. It may be, in other
words, that the problem is not a lack of technology but a lack of
funding and research support for those already engaged in developing
alternatives to ‘big ag’ or ‘big food.’”

There are public efforts on the table that Schweizer points to as
indicators of what that “just transition” toward a less
exploitative and monopolized food system might look like. One such
option might be municipal and state-level “Good Food” bills that
allow institutions to take into account animal welfare, labor rights,
and support of local economics when purchasing foods rather than being
required to go with the lowest cost option. New York State, which has
codified its pandemic-era Nourish New York
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program so that food pantries can prioritize local foods, is on the
verge of passing such a bill
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This is something being lobbied for on a federal level, as well.

Creating a major public movement and awareness around the corporate
consolidation of the food system requires a constant effort.
Industrial, corporatized agriculture hasn’t been successful in
“feeding the world,” as many proponents of big food
claim—indeed, it hasn’t been able to feed the richest country on
earth. And yet its stranglehold not just on supermarkets and pantries
but on public imagination—the very understanding of what “food”
is, as well as how one procures and prepares it—feels inescapable.
On social media, there is talk of people who are “ingredient”
households
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where food is bought by ingredient and then prepared from scratch.
This is often presented as a rare, even cumbersome notion as opposed
to those homes where corporate, processed foods are the norm. As Patel
wrote years ago in _Stuffed and Starved_, “Unless you’re a
corporate food executive, the food system isn’t working for you.”
And yet people believe that it is, even when the food is increasingly
arriving [[link removed]] to
supermarkets and restaurants tainted.

As big food continues to swallow up any alternative that emerges, from
organic to plant-based foods to grain-free tortilla chips, and present
the same food in different packaging to create the illusion of options
at the store, it’s imperative to question the motives, the
practices, and the politicians who allow this power and consolidation
to go unchecked. But it’s also important to ask and imagine what the
real alternative is, what the next move is after this corporate food
regime is knocked off its throne: a system not driven by profit, but
by ecology, workers, and real human nutritional needs.

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Through our (more than a thousand, and growing) HIGHLY VETTED
RECIPES from the _How to Cook Everything_ series, original
food ESSAYS AND REPORTING, thoughtful PODCAST CONVERSATIONS and
introductions to NEW AND RESPONSIBLE FOOD PRODUCTS, we aim to
showcase what’s possible, from farm to fork, and power a growing
movement that encourages people to THINK ABOUT FOOD NOT AS A
COMMODITY, BUT AS CENTRAL TO OUR HEALTH AND HAPPINESS.

We hope you join us on this journey. We’d love to have you as a part
of the Bittman community.

* Big Food
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* corporate power
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* food corporatons
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* fast-food industry
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