Illusion of Choice

If you venture off the outer perimeter of your grocery store and shop the inner isles (and we all do) and then try to make conscious decisions about which brands to buy then you are suffering from an illusion of choice. Virtually all the brands on grocery shelves are controlled by 10 Mega companies. If you pick the Kashi cereal over other brands because you are impressed by its claims then know that you are actually buying Kellogg cereal. That's just one example that strikes home for me since I like Kashi.

The reality is that the following 10 companies control most all of your food that is not fresh or homegrown and in many cases even the fresh food in the grocery is from some them.


Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, General Foods, Kellogg's, Mars, Unilever and Johnson&Johnson.

Here is a nifty map that shows the relationships of most of the food companies and their corporate owners.

You can get the full size view of the map here.

As you can see there isn't much on the grocery store shelves that doesn't have one of the big ten food companies fingerprints all over it. All in all it is pretty depressing. That is all.

hat tip to Marion Nestle for the heads up