Do multinationals have no shame?
Is that a real question?
According to The New York Times, PepsiCo’s snack brand, Frito-Lay is now making some bold claims.
Frito-Lay is one of several big companies that, along with some large-scale farming concerns, are embracing a broad interpretation of what eating locally means. This mission creep has the original locavores choking on their yerba mate. But food executives who measure marketing budgets in the millions say they are mining the concept because consumers care more than ever about where their food comes from.
“Local for us has two appeals,” said Aurora Gonzalez, director of public relations for Frito-Lay North America, which is owned by PepsiCo. “We are interested in quality and quickness because we want consumers to get the freshest product possible, but we have a fairly significant sustainability program, and local is part of that. We want to do business more efficiently, but do it in a more environmentally conscious way.”
Here’s the other side:
“The local foods movement is about an ethic of food that values reviving small scale, ecological, place-based, and relationship-based food systems,” Jessica Prentice, a food writer in the San Francisco Bay area, said. “Large corporations peddling junk food are the exact opposite of what this is about.”
Prentice wisely adds, “You know the locavore phenomenon is having an impact when the corporations begin co-opting it.”
Amen.