The Top Dividend Aristocrats in Food and Beverage

Dividend-paying companies are an oasis in the desert of underperforming stocks. They offer solid payouts today and the promise of capital gains tomorrow. According to a study by Ibbotson, reinvested dividends made up about 40% of total stock returns from 1926 to 2006. In fact, dividend investing is so appealing that super investor Warren Buffett has made it a significant component of his portfolio.

When searching for great dividend stocks, it makes a lot of sense to start with companies that have been playing the dividend game the longest. Standard & Poor's has culled the dividend winners from the also-rans in a list it calls the "dividend aristocrats."

Let's examine the top dividend aristocrats by yield in the food and beverage industry. For context, I've also included their five-year annualized dividend growth rate.

Company	Yield	Five-year dividend growth
PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP  )	2.9%	13.4%
Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO  )	2.8%	9.5%
McCormick (NYSE: MKC  )	2.4%	9.9%
Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE: ADM  )	1.9%	12.0%
Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL  )	1.8%	10.8%
Brown-Forman (NYSE: BF-B  )	1.8%	8.4%

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

These aren't formal recommendations -- just ideas for your own further research. Still, they could give you a great start toward find companies capable of paying rising dividends for a quarter-century or more. You can see the fastest-growing 2011 aristocrats here.

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