Local Sale Ads and Their Corporations

These are some local sale ads to which I have added labels to show most, though not all, of the corporations that control our food (or at least the food that is heavily advertised and pushed at us). Some notable missing areas: meat and veg. It is nearly impossible to know where your produce and meats are from in a standard supermarket, especially from the sale ads. Supermarkets tend to be open 24/7, but the butchers and produce managers who might be able to answer some questions, obviously, do not.

Swanson's Ad - Page 1

Swanson's Ad - Page 2

Swanson's Ad - Page 3

Swanson's Ad - Page 4

I was struck by the realisation that the absolute worst place to shop in this area if you're trying to avoid faceless corporation-controlled foods is the most "local" store: Swanson's. This is a chain of 3 family owned grocery stores in the Aberdeen/Hoquiam area. They do have a variety of locally made foods in the store (not advertised except the brownies on page 2), but the only ones worth your time are the freshly-made tortillas or tortilla chips in the little in-store tortilleria.

Safeway Insert - Page 1

Safeway Insert - Page 2

Safeway Insert - Page 3

Safeway Insert - Page 3

Safeway Ad - Page 1

Safeway Ad - Page 2

Safeway Ad - Page 3

Safeway Ad - Page 4

One of the hardest things to identify in source was wine. I don't know if this means that most wine is produced by small-scale wineries and not owned or controlled by a corporation at all, or if it's just more opaque. I find it hard to believe that big-name, heavily-advertised wines like Yellow Tail or Layer Cake are not owned by some conglomerate or other.

Top Foods - Page 1

Top Foods Ad - Page 2 - Sorry about the scanning error

Top Foods Ad - Page 3

Top Foods Ad - Page 4

Top Foods Insert - Page 1

Top Foods Insert - Page 2

This local Top Foods sale ad is the same for the Aberdeen store as the Olympia store, but if you've ever been to both you'll know how vast the differences. When the Aberdeen store stopped being open 24/7 the quality of everything went swiftly downhill. I think the company just doesn't care about this small store anymore. I know some of the employees were saying they might have to try to find a second job just to make up the hours they were going to lose (by not being open 24/7), but I think they must have cut more than just their hours; everyone in that store seems to HATE their job, and it shows in the treatment of the store and the customers. The Olympia store, on the other hand, is blissful. Always. It's beautiful, well-lit, friendly, well-stocked, I LOVE the Olympia Top Foods.
...
But I love Trader Joe's more.

P.S. - The Food Day presentation went really well!

P.P.S. - In case it actually needs to be said; all trademarks and whatever are the properties of their respective blahblahblah I don't own any of this. Nor did I ask anyone's permission but they do distribute the sale ads publicly, if that matters.

BLOG ACTION DAY

Actually, I'm doing a much bigger project for Food Day (24th Oct 2011) and I'm building up a good post for that. It's going to be a presentation to 2 classes at Grays Harbor College. We're showing Forks Over Knives (I hope that link works, it's to the Netflix page since the movie is available on Instant) and I'm doing a lecture on knowing where your food comes from, tailored to the local area.

In particular there is a farmers market and "local" butcher that regular features factory-farm pork from Iowa (we're in WA state), mangoes from god-knows-where, etc. They do have some local produce and products, but they give the impression that everything in the market is local/organic/fresh/good for you/whatever and it really isn't. I've also got a feature of the lecture that I will try to post here when it's all done: Three local grocery circulars with added labels of every corporate parent company of everything on sale. It really opens your eyes to see just how much (say, 95%) is completely corporate-sponsored and mostly by Kraft.

Happy Blog Action Day! See you soon with more info!