According to UB Campus Dining & Shops, the school spent nearly $4 million on locally sourced food in 2015; however, at least some of that money isn’t buying the vine-ripened tomatoes and bunches of fresh-cut kale that come to mind when you hear the words “local food.”

“We make #UBuffalo a little greener — and healthier — with fresh, local food on campus EarthWeek2016,” reads a tweet posted to the University at Buffalo’s main announcement account @UBNow on April 20th. The tweet is accompanied by a stock photo of tomatoes ripening on vines that bears the caption: “By working directly with local farms to design menus around harvest dates, we’re supporting the farm-to-table movement and serving meals that are healthier for everyone (including mother nature)”.

A post on the UB Campus Dining & Shops website touts the program as a benefit to both the environment and the local economy:

Several studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally-owned business, rather than a nationally-owned businesses, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers, and farms in order to strengthen the economic base of the community. And local businesses are owned by people who live in this community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community’s future. This aids in economic sustainability for your region.

The post goes on to refer to UB’s “Made In/Grown In New York” program which “spent $3.9 million in food purchases with local vendors,” giving the impression that UB sources close to $4 million of its food from independent producers and growers owned by Western New Yorkers.

Looking at UB’s list of local vendors reveals that this is not entirely the case.

In addition to local producers like Costanzo’s Bakery in Cheektowaga and farms like Bowman Farms in Gowanda, UB’s local vendors include Desiderio’s Produce in the Clinton Bailey food terminal, which distributes foods imported from all over the country, and Regional Distributors, a Rochester company that distributes janitorial and food service products by a variety of manufacturers.

More troubling, UB also counts products from multi-billion dollar corporations as local food. Such businesses include PepsiCo, the conglomerate that produces both Pepsi and Frito-Lay products, and which brought in $63 billion in revenue last year; General Mills, a Minneapolis-based corporation behind the food brands Totino’s and Old El Paso as well as the Cheerios whose production can be smelled downtown; and Illinois-based distributor US Foods, the tenth-largest privately traded corporation in the country, owned by the private equity firms Clayton Dubilier Rice and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

It’s true that even the multinational companies on UB’s list of local food vendors have a presence in New York; however the phrase “local farmers and food manufacturers” does not connote plastic bottles of Mountain Dew and foil bags of Doritos. And UB’s materials promoting the “Made In/Grown in New York” program are clearly meant to suggest a more provincial reading of the term “local,” giving the actual program the appearance of a cynical marketing gimmick.

The UB Campus Dining & Shops local purchasing website lists all of its vendors — including the mega-corporations like PepsiCo and General Mills — under the heading “Sustainable Foods” and pairs the list with a photo of a white-haired man in a plaid shirt and work smock harvesting tomatoes into a wicker basket, which appears to also be used in a number of templates for gardening websites as well as by a Belgian greenhouse manufacturer.

UB extols “the importance of helping our community find and choose local products while building relationships with growers, food artisans, and food manufacturers right here in Western New York,” in marketing foods produced by corporate megaliths.

Three Pillars Catering, which provides services to UB’s Jacobs Executive Development Center and the Center for Tomorrow, employs a nearly identical list of local vendors on its website, though it omits the corporate giants named on the Campus Dining & Shops site. Three Pillars does assert the $3.9 million local spending figure.

Vanessa Dwyer, who leads the UB Environmental Network, said that UB often exaggerates its commitment to sustainability, especially on social media.

“They talk a big talk, but don’t walk the walk,” Dwyer said.

The UB Environmental Network, along with the Professional Staff Senate and Faculty Senate, has been active in pushing businesses in the Commons, a privately operated commercial development on the UB campus, to stop using Styrofoam containers. Along with its local purchasing, Campus Dining & Shops touts “Styrofoam-free” resident and retail dining locations on its website.

The university did not immediately comment on the local purchasing program, aside from replies from its Twitter account citing Frito Lay, US Foods, and Pepsi’s local presence. The operator of the Twitter account declined to provide breakdowns of how much of the $3.9 million is spent with each local vendor, and UB has not yet responded to a Freedom of Information Law request for that information filed on April 21. UB spokesman John Della Contrada said in an email that he would look into the matter and that he would obtain a comment for Campus Dining & Shops, but has not responded since April 25.