2 WORDS CAN TELL YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT WHERE YOUR FOOD COMES FROM
Farm-to-plate, locally grown, or “know where your food comes from” are a few catch phrases that have become popular in recent years, but when it comes to packaged foods, it isn’t super straightforward figuring out who is making the food or where. Below we’ll teach you a few simple steps to learn where packaged food is actually being made so you can make informed choices about your meals.
For packaged foods like backpacking meals, the location of the business is required to be printed right on the bag. Often times you’ll see confusing statements like “Made for XY Handmade Foods” or “Distributed by Small Company XY” but these words actually tell you they don’t make the products themselves. Let's take a look at how to determine who does make their own food.
DO THEY SAY 'FOR' OR 'BY'?
Look for the telltale manufacturing statement, below or next to the nutrition label on the back of the packaging. The first word will be something along the lines of manufactured, packed, made, or distributed- but often times the second word is your key. The second word will either be ‘BY’ or ‘FOR.’ Clue in here because this is where you can tell if a company simply has an HQ or warehouse with a few offices, or if they actually own a production facility and make the food themselves.
Manufactured BY tells you that this brand owns the production facility. Manufactured FOR means the brand is paying a different company to manufacture it, commonly referred to as co-packing. See the easy chart below to determine if a brand is making their own food or reselling products manufactured by someone else. If you want to ensure you are buying a locally made product, stick to the column on the left.
DIG DEEPER.
If you run into these "for" or "distributed by" statements and want to go deeper to find who and where this food is truly made, read on!
Look for a “bug”- a term that refers to the white circle stamp you’ve seen on packaged foods containing meat or poultry. This white circle contains an establishment number which you can search here seeing the address and name of the company who owns the facility. Once you search the numbers on the stamp, you'll be able to see the manufacturing facility. If it's not the same as the company you are buying it from, this food is being co-packed.
In summary, it’s legal to list where the brand's HQ is, making it look like it’s a local company, but just because the brand is local to you does not mean the food is produced there. Luckily, food laws make it a quick case to solve in most cases.
CO-PACKED, LIKE THE REST OF THEM.
So you found out a brand doesn't make their food, it's made in Utah.
Co-packing has become extremely common in the packaged food industry because it’s significantly less expensive than building your own facility- plus you avoid hiring labor, the hazards of raw foods, physically working in kitchens, or needing any culinary know-how. In turn, this allows a food company to be just a marketing and sales brand. This trend has flooded markets in packaged food and beverages.
Co-packing facilities are not built to create a single great product, but instead are generalists making a wider variety of products at a lower level of quality for many brands at once. Quality and attention to detail will most likely be better if the company actually owns their production facility and is engaged with the cooking processes themselves.
SETTING GASTRO GNOME APART.
Conversely, we proudly stamp each of your bags with “Made By Gastro Gnome in Bozeman, MT” where our kitchen is a hub for flavor, quality, and real ingredients from farms around Montana. Part of what sets us apart so far is our ability to source fresh ingredients, and treat each one with the precise culinary skills and flavors we know belong in the bag. We’re not another marketing company taking a stab at the packaged food industry- we’re a food AND cooking company changing what’s possible for flavor the backcountry by doing it our own way.
Arm yourself with the little bit of knowledge from the chart below and continue to support the food systems that you want to see grow!
