26th August 2026
As Canada gets ready to counter Donald Trump Tariffs and Canadians are trying to avoid American products as new tariffs will soon b implemented. So we take look at food in the UK.
Walk into almost any British supermarket and it is easy to believe that we are buying British food from British companies. The names on the shelves are familiar, some of them have been part of everyday life for generations, and many are manufactured in Britain.
But look behind the brand name and a different picture emerges.
Some of Britain's best-known food brands are now owned by American multinational companies. That does not mean the food itself comes from America. In fact, in some cases an American-owned company is buying large quantities of British agricultural produce and employing thousands of people in Britain.
That distinction matters.
It is particularly relevant now, when questions about American trade policy and the relationship between Britain and the United States are prompting some consumers to ask a surprisingly simple question: if I want to reduce my dependence on American products, what exactly would I have to stop buying?
The answer is much more complicated than simply looking for an American flag on the packet.
The American companies hiding in plain sight
Take PepsiCo.
It is an American company, but many of its British products would hardly be regarded as American by the average shopper. Its UK portfolio includes Walkers, Doritos, Quaker, Pipers, Wotsits, Monster Munch and Quavers. PepsiCo says it employs more than 4,500 people in the UK, operates ten UK locations and works with more than 290 farmers supplying ingredients.
The Walkers name is about as British as supermarket food gets. The crisps are manufactured at the company's huge Leicester factory, where PepsiCo has invested heavily in recent years.
So should a British shopper regard a packet of Walkers as an American product?
That depends on what we mean by "American".
The owner is American. The factory is British. Much of the agricultural supply chain is British. The potatoes certainly do not need to cross the Atlantic.
This is the first lesson in tracing the food on our supermarket shelves: ownership, manufacturing and agricultural origin are three different things.
Then there is Kraft Heinz.
Heinz is another name that generations of Britons have grown up with. Baked beans, tomato ketchup, soups and salad cream are hardly exotic American imports. Yet Kraft Heinz is an American company, and its UK portfolio includes Heinz, HP Sauce, Daddies, Amoy and other familiar brands.
Again, American ownership does not automatically mean American ingredients.
Cadbury is another example
Cadbury has a particularly strong British identity. Its history stretches back into the nineteenth century and its products remain deeply associated with Britain.
Today, however, Cadbury is owned by Mondelez International, the American multinational behind a huge global portfolio of snacks and confectionery.
The same pattern appears repeatedly.
Mars is American-owned and is responsible for some of the most recognisable confectionery brands in Britain. More recently, Mars also acquired Kellanova, bringing brands such as Pringles into its portfolio.
General Mills is another American food giant with a presence in Britain, including brands such as Nature Valley and Old El Paso.
McCormick, another US company, owns the Schwartz herbs and spices business.
None of this means that Britain has suddenly started importing American food on a massive scale. Quite the opposite: much of this production takes place inside Britain.
So are we actually eating American food?
This is where the story becomes much more interesting.
Suppose you buy a packet of crisps made in Leicester by an American-owned company.
The company may be American.
The potatoes may be British.
The factory workers are British.
The electricity and other services are purchased in Britain.
The packaging may have been manufactured in Britain or elsewhere in Europe.
The money ultimately flows through an American-owned multinational, but the physical food supply chain may be predominantly British.
The reverse can also happen.
A British-owned food company could buy an ingredient from the United States.
That means company nationality is a poor guide to food origin.
And this is why the idea of tracing a normal supermarket basket is so revealing.
The British companies still on our shelves
There are still substantial British food businesses.
Associated British Foods is an excellent example. It owns or operates familiar brands including Kingsmill, Dorset Cereals, Ryvita, Silver Spoon and Billington's. ABF describes these as UK-focused food businesses in its latest annual report.
So someone wanting to support British-owned food businesses has choices.
But even here there is a warning.
ABF is a multinational group. It has substantial operations outside Britain and owns food businesses around the world.
Again, the modern food industry doesn't fit neatly into national boxes.
The ingredient is often more important than the logo
This is perhaps the most useful conclusion for shoppers.
If your concern is American-grown agricultural produce, looking at the ownership of the company isn't enough.
You need to examine the ingredient.
Take flour.
A bag of flour produced by a company with international ownership can contain British-grown wheat. In that case, the agricultural product is British even if the corporate ownership isn't.
The same applies to oats.
Peanut butter is another good example. A British supermarket brand could contain peanuts grown in Argentina, China or the United States. The name on the front of the jar doesn't tell you that.
And then there is maize.
That deserves particular attention because corn is heavily associated with American agriculture and can appear in foods under several different names, including maize flour, corn starch and other corn-derived ingredients.
So if someone genuinely wants to reduce their use of US agricultural produce, the ingredients list and country-of-origin information are more useful than the nationality of the company printed on the front.
There is another reason this matters
American ownership isn't necessarily bad news for British agriculture.
PepsiCo provides a good example.
The company says it works with hundreds of British farmers and has UK manufacturing operations including its Quaker oats mill in Cupar and Walkers factory in Leicester.
That means an American-owned company can be an important customer for British farmers.
Indeed, if every British consumer suddenly stopped buying a particular American-owned brand, some of the economic consequences could fall on British factories, British workers, British hauliers and British farmers as well as the American parent company.
That doesn't mean consumers shouldn't make choices. It simply means we should understand what those choices actually achieve.
The supermarket shelf is really a map of globalisation
Look down a typical supermarket aisle and you can see the last 50 years of globalisation.
A British brand is bought by an American company.
An American company manufactures the product in Britain.
British farmers supply some of the ingredients.
Other ingredients come from Europe or elsewhere.
The packaging is sourced internationally.
The finished product is transported around Britain.
And the profits eventually become part of the financial results of a multinational whose shareholders may be spread across the world.
It is difficult to find a more complicated journey than that behind something as simple as a packet of biscuits or a jar of sauce.
Perhaps the better question is: what do we want to support?
There are at least three different objectives a shopper might have.
One might be "I don't want to buy products from American-owned companies."
Another might be "I don't want to consume agricultural produce grown in America."
And a third might be "I want to support British farmers, British factories and British jobs."
Those three objectives can produce very different shopping lists.
Buying a British-owned brand does not necessarily guarantee British ingredients.
Buying an American-owned brand does not necessarily mean buying American food.
And avoiding an American-owned company could sometimes mean avoiding a product that provides a market for British farmers.
That is why the question of who is really feeding Britain? is much more complicated than it first appears.
What I find most interesting
We often talk about food security as though it means having enough food within Britain's borders.
But food security also involves who owns the companies processing our food, where our ingredients come from, how dependent we are on international supply chains and what happens if trade between major countries becomes disrupted.
The supermarket shelf hides all of that.
A packet of crisps can carry a British brand, be made in a British factory, contain British potatoes and nevertheless ultimately belong to an American corporation.
A British-owned company can sell a product containing an imported American ingredient.
Neither is necessarily good or bad.
But if consumers are going to make informed choices in response to today's trade tensions, we need to know which part of the food chain we are actually choosing.
Perhaps the most useful thing we could do is stop asking simply, "Is this an American product?"
Instead, turn the packet over.
Ask:
Who owns the company?
Where was it made?
Where did the main ingredients come from?
And how much of the value remains in Britain?
Those four questions tell us far more about what we are really buying than the brand name on the front.
And the answers may surprise us.