How it all started - problems with pears

This is my first blog ever.

Today I am going outside of my comfort zone and putting my thoughts down on virtual paper, instead of just keeping them to myself.  I hope to start a discussion and journal of sorts to address my growing concerns about our food supply, on a large scale, and the food that I purchase and serve to my family, on a small scale.  I have a lot of questions about food, and this blog is to provide a place where I can post answers to some of these questions, when I finally do find them.  For example:  Do you know what GMO means?  Do you know that food companies do not have to label whether their food contains GMOs, and why are they fighting so hard to keep it that way?  Is industrial scale farming really the best way to feed our country?  The biggest problem that I have right now is that I feel that my government, both state and federal, are taking away my ability to make decisions about what I feed my family, because I cannot determine where food comes from, how it was grown, how long ago it was grown, and what type of seeds/plants were used.

This all came to a head for me a few months ago on Aisle 4 of my conventional grocery store as I was selecting packaged pear cups for my 2 year old daughter.  In my naivete, before that moment I believed that all food in my grocery store was grown somewhere in the United States.  We're the breadbasket of the world!  It could have been grown more than one year ago, freeze dried, preserved, radiated, gassed, etc., but at the very least I knew it had been grown in the U.S.  To my surprise and horror, the pears I held that day were grown in China.  That's about as far away as you can get from Georgia, USA.  This made me even angrier because the brand was as American as apple pie, a name I felt I could trust, and their label stated "distributed in California".

First tip:  "distributed from" does not mean "grown in".

The distribution label was right there in bold print, but the information about being a pear from China was hidden under the label, printed in light ink using tiny dotted letters.  The pear cups did not come home with me and I looked at every product in the store after that moment with suspicion.

I next went to my national-chain "health food" grocery store, where I thought I would have much better results.  I again wanted to buy pear juice boxes for my daughter.  There was the familiar distribution label from an organic brand, but I also found the tiny dotted letter label.  The pears were grown in Argentina.  Yes, they were certified organic by the USDA, but now I wondered what that meant.  Did USDA officials go down to the farm in Argentina and make sure that the farmers were not spraying pesticides all over everything?  Does organic in Argentina mean the same thing as organic in the U.S.?  At the end of the day I bought the pear juice because at least it was grown in the same hemisphere that I lived in, and I also acknowledged that it was not pear season in the U.S.

So, be sure to read your labels, find that tiny dotted print, and try to buy food GROWN in the U.S.  I want to support our farmers and our economy, not outsource my pears to be grown in other countries.  Better yet,  find and buy food that was grown as close to your home as possible.

These pears were grown at Frog Hollow Farms in California.