Organic Brands -- The Greener Choice With An Oddly Crunchy Darth Vader Center?

That bowl of wholesome, good for you organic flax, twig and berry cereal that you're munching on right now sure tastes good, doesn't it? I bet it's made by one of these brands, huh?

You might have to pull out your magnifying glass to get the jist of this colorful diagram, or you can just keep reading my post and I'll just cut to the chase. You may think that you're supporting environmentally conscious mom and pop companies when you bring smaller label brands into your home, but it turns out that quite a few of them are corporate owned.  Actually, way more than I ever imagined.

Check out the big food giants above -- these are all brands that every single one of us grew up with before we even had a clue what organic or natural options were. If you were to open up my fridge or cupboard right here and right now, you'd see a ton of the "green oval" brands depicted above. Now, why should I be annoyed that my hard-earned bucks are lining the pockets of these corporations rather than what I thought were the little organic guys jumping up and down saying "pick me, pick me"?

I dunno...I feel a little misled...maybe even a little greenwashed. I thought that I was getting one thing but instead I'm getting an entirely different thing altogether. I may be eating healthier food (fingers crossed) that is legitimately raised in a sustainable and organic manner, but now I realize that I've been inadvertently supporting big business. These are the same guys that keep big agriculture going strong with their GMO-seeds that turn into pesticide-covered crops and, finally, are processed into the Wheaties and Doritos that you and I eat.

Big companies like Clorox and Coca-Cola and General Mills don't have the greatest corporate responsibility records -- some are downright appalling. If I hadn't stumbled on the visuals depicted in this blog, I would have continued skipping through the grocery store aisles without a care in the world, thinking that my supposed organic-branded buying choices were "greener" than what I used to fill my shopping cart with.

Do our dollars end up working against the environment if we buy Burt Bee's products, made by the same manufacter of the nation's most popular brand of bleach (which creates 11,000 compounds called organochlorines that damage the ozone and are toxic and carcinogenic)? How about when we support Dagoba, the organic sub-brand of one of the nation's top users of genetically modified sugar?  Should we second-guess this seemingly conscientious consumer choice knowing that Hershey's sources cocoa from plantations that employ slave labor and trafficked child labor (according to Co-op America)? Is the wool pulled over our eyes when we seek out these higher-priced organic and natural brands? Are we getting the bait and switch?