The local food movement is gaining enough popularity to capture the interest of big business. Some of the biggest corporate food companies are looking for ways to greenwash their products. Although it sure beats sourcing their crops from overseas and is a step in the right direction, the following marketing claims can be misleading since the actual processing of these often factory-farm grown products may be anything but local:

–Frito-Lay North America owned by PepsiCo is trying to portray Lay’s potato chips as a local food in the regions where the potatoes are grown.

–ConAgra is trying to say that because Hunt’s canned tomatoes are mostly grown within 120 miles of its processing plant in Oakdale, California, that makes them “local” for Oakdale, and maybe even Californians.

–Kraft is trying to figure out whether people in Wisconsin will buy more pickles if they know the cucumbers that go into a jar of Claussen’s are grown there.

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