When pressed, the nation’s biggest food processors and retailers, including General Mills, PepsiCo, and Tyson, say they’re doing their best to keep prices down, and blame inflation for unavoidable price rises. But as these companies hide behind ‘difficult times,’ they’re making record profits, issuing generous dividends to their shareholders, and spending billions of dollars buying back their own shares on the open market to inflate stock value, a move that serves to enrich executives and investors at consumers’ cost.