Agricultural Review

Bare Naked? - Not Even A Peak

Professor William C Bailey
Chair, School of Agriculture
Western Illinois University
Macomb, Illinois

You don’t need to keep this column away from the kids, even though it does discuss how much the granola company “Bear Naked” is willing to reveal. As it turns out, the company, despite its rather suggestive title, keeps its kimono tightly held around its products. While all of the farmers at the local Macomb farmers market are very happy to share the background of the food they sell, Bear Naked won’t even provide us a little peek.

Over the past several years, I have given the cereal company “Bear Naked” a lot of my money. I like its breakfast cereals and thought Bear Naked had both a clever marketing strategy and a sincere interest in keeping consumers informed about its products. I was half right.

One morning, while consuming my usual large bowl of “Bear Naked” granola, I noted the package detailed how proud the company was about its granola – “foods should be minimally processed and made from natural ingredients”. So, seeking more information about processing and natural ingredients, I checked out their website (http:///www.bearnaked.com).

At the website, I learned a lot about some of the company’s employees – Jill Wieczorek is turned off by “Bad vibes”, Luz Pena’s favorite word (sic) is “Let’s Do It”; and Katie Kinwan would not like to be a “Garbage Collector”. Because I was able to learn so much about the members of the “Bear Naked team”, I thought my curiosity about their granola would be just as easily satisfied. How wrong I was.

Because there was nothing on the website that provided information about the “Bearly Processed” ingredients used in the cereal, I called the company seeking answers to two seemingly simple questions: Who makes your cereal? and Where are the “natural ingredients” from? Because processing and ingredients appeared to be important to the company, I thought these questions would be easily answered. Wrong again. The chirpy person who answered the company phone quickly suggested I call their news people.

I called the news people – a hired public relations firm whose job seemed to be to keep Bear Naked customers at an arm’s length. Katie, who answered my call, seemed a little incredulous I wanted to know such detail about the ingredients in which the company takes such pride. I was told that, in effect, the company did not care to talk about either ingredients or production. She eventually promised to get back to me and she did – by email. Her email stated that” we would like to politely decline the opportunity” to discuss Bear Naked products. My third question now is: What is it about their products they are trying to hide?

Despite the stone walling from Bear Naked, I someday hope to learn more about the natural ingredients they are so proud of. Maybe they should change their name to “You Don’t Need To Know” all natural granola. Actually, what they call the company is irrelevant - I have stopped buying their product until they are willing to tell me more about what I am putting in my mouth.