Pet Food Recall Reveals Brand Name Scam

The recent pet food recall affecting many brands of cat food and dog food manufactured by a company called Menu Foods has many pet owners concerned. I too being a cat owner and an animal lover am concerned about the recall. Luckily for us the brand of cat food we feed our cat is not on the list of brands that are being recalled.

What I find extremely interesting about this situation is the fact that all of these brand names being recalled are all produced by the same company and since they are all affected by this problem they must all have basically the same source. All of these different brand names that are presented as somehow being different from each other on the shelves of our local grocery stores are all actually the same thing with different packaging and different advertising campaigns.

If you look at the list of cat foods that are being recalled you'll see many "generic" brands like Key Food, Food Lion, Foodtown, and Winn Dixie sharing space with much more expensive name brands like Iams.

So if these brands are all actually the same product what are you paying for when you purchase a "name brand" brand of cat food? You are paying for their advertising. You are paying for the reason that you are buying it which is that you've been programmed to think that this brand is better than another. I don't mean to come off harsh when I say this as I too have been programmed by many such commercials in my life. Advertising works. That's why companies spend millions of dollars on advertising instead of spending that money on actually trying to create better, safer products.

My suggestion is that unless you have a really good reason to buy a specific name brand you should just buy the generic brand. The generic brands do not have to pay for advertising which is why they are cheaper. They are not cheaper due to less quality. Commercials don't increase the quality of the products that they advertise.

Do you think what I'm saying only goes for dog and cat food? Think again. Do you really think there's a difference between a t shirt you buy at Old Navy and a generic t shirt you buy at Wal-Mart? Besides the price tag difference I mean? Before paying for Old Navy's next advertising blitz you may want to look into the source of their products.

We are a society that is obsessed with name brands and yet these brands are almost always completely meaningless and have nothing to do with quality or real value. It's a great example of the shallowness and mindlessness that pervades the commercial civilization that makes up most of the world now. Before you purchase another product based on the name brand and a commercial you saw, stop and think. What are you really paying for?

Please let me be clear that I am not stating that every name brand product is exactly the same as the generic version of that product. For example there are many different kinds of ice cream which differ greatly in taste & quality. Ben & Jerry's is certainly a different product than your grocery store's generic brand ice cream. My point is that many times this is not the case. Many times there is next to no difference between different brands besides their packaging and advertising.