I was unhappy to discover that my favorite brand of string cheese, Polly-O, is now owned by Kraft. Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, quality deteriorates when the Kraft name appears. Needless to say, I'm in mourning about Kraft's takeover of Cadbury.

I saw the announcement this morning and now even Cadbury isn't sacred anymore. :o( It seems food isn't sacred unless you make it yourself from scratch (and that does taste better!).

I'll tell you a little story. My father was a Breakstone distributor. I used to work with him during the summer. He told me, once that Kraft and Breakstone were the same products, despite the little old women on our route who insisted that Kraft Sour Cream was better than Breakstone, or that Breakstone was better than Kraft.

One day, while loading up our truck at the warehouse, I tried to pick up a carton of sour cream by the flap. The carton broke up and two dozen of containers of sour cream spilled out.

Kraft sour cream. In Kraft containers. In Breakstone boxes. The entire shipment of sour cream had been packed in the wrong boxes because, in the end, my father was right. Kraft Sour Cream and Breakstone Sour Cream are produced in the same factories and come out of the same machines, or a least they did back in the 1960s.

By the way, in the Western United States, "Breakstone" products are distributed under the Knudsen label, so you can add those two companies to the list.

Many name brands private label the same product in the retail package for large distributors. As the well of companies are consolidated into larger corporations there will be less and less actual choice because many formulas are just repackaged under different brand names.

P&G was the first to understand that there is not one product for each market. Instead there are multiple products for market segments. For example P&G make Loves and Pampers. Each has its own identity and each sells to a segment of the market. Same is true with soap, P&G has Zest, Dove, Ivory, Dial, and a whole list of others. It is smart marketing because no one product will meet the needs of everyone. P&G does not sell P&G it sells its brands.

The new business model is why create and develop new products and business when it is easier to just buy existing companies that already produce the products. Once you own them you can apply economy of scale and other cost reduction methods and increase profits and market reach without spending money on development.

The bottom line is in the next 30 years most of what you buy will be produced by a handful of multinational companies that will control the entire market.

Interesting but not really a surprise. As true competition disappears, we'd better hope that companies are so afraid of getting sued or of violating regulations and triggering negative publicity that they continue to make largely safe products....

Kraft, Tyson, Monsanto, if we only knew that all of our brands and food labels were housed under a "select few" multinational companies that do not have our best interests at heart and the very food they stock our shelves with they would not touch with a Hazmat suit on.

Per my question to Back to Nature brand earlier today, I was informed (as a selling point to my objection to soy lecithin in their product) that Kraft also owns this brand. The email came from Kim McMiller Associate Director, Consumer Relations. I see that someone here says Dove is Kraft, but it's actually Unilever; I avoid them also.