Utz Snacks Steps Into Organic

A few days ago, I went to my local "natural" market, whose quotations only exist for the fact that it carries a good amount of organic and local options, but in essence it is still a grocery store that caters to the upper-middle class of which I am not really a part. In any case, in one of their "wholesome aisle" endcaps, which is conveniently nestled alongside the bulk foods aisle, I ran across a familiar brand in organic clothing: Utz Snacks.

Utz is an east coast staple snack brand. Everybody loves them. From convenient stores to large box stores, everybody carries Utz snacks, and so it was a real pleasure to see that they are at least addressing a consumer base that is currently demanding more certified organic options.

They carry Organic Blue Corn Tortillas, Organic Yellow Corn Tortilla, Organic White Corn Tortillas and Organic Seven Whole Grains Pretzel Sticks.

The only concern now is the use of the official terminology once they are adapted by more companies. Groucho Marx once famously stated that he wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member. Equally, as more companies adopt the organic label, as the United States Federal Government gets more and more lax with laws regarding genetically modified crops, one needs to question what organic will eventually mean.

For now, general opinion is that certification is reasonably trustworthy.

More important than all of that, though, is actually seeing the end-result of our work as consumer activists. Utz is a snack company, and they've put out four organic options out. And this is a great start.

Utz has somewhere betwen 80-100 different snack items (I lost count),  all prepared in different methods according to their product line. Some are made with peanut oil, some are made with cottonseed oil, some are made with potatoes, wheat, corn or nuts of all sorts - many of these items can contain partially organic ingredients which aren't in question and they can also contain a number of items that are highly questionable in the GMO debate.

To be sure, we continue to choose responsibly so that our short-term desires aren't met with the cost of continued environmental degradation due to overuse of pesticides, herbicides or monocropping. Probably, if we were truly choosing our statement for these things, we wouldn't choose any commercialized snack product at all. But since we have become accustomed to commercially prepared snacks, for now, organic is our best option.

Photo credit: Utz Organic Snacks