Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

I hope I didn't lead anyone to believe we should only be concerned about food coming from China, I think we should be concerned about food coming from any country that does not have as rigid, or more rigid, food production standards that we do. Europe, for example, has tougher laws on dairy products: farmers are not allowed to give their cows the milk-producing hormone (and has not for years), so that their conventional (ie, non-organic) dairy products may be better than our own conventional dairy products here at home, because we are allowed to use those hormones in the cows.

Part of the concern is also buying and eating foods grown in other countries that are not in season where we live. Should we really be able to buy melons in the dead of winter? There is actually a cookbook called "Eating in Season" put out by a local farm in my town that highlights what foods we should eat and when. It would be hard to follow, though, since in winter you get to eat kale, chard, turnips, squash, turnips, and potatoes, yum, yum! Not sure we could do that for a whole winter, but if that's all that were available.....we'd have to, and we'd survive.

The news of organic food not necessarily being grown on our soil made our local newspaper, so there is a lot of interest, and concern, out there. I guess my point in all of this was just awareness of where your food is really coming from. PWP need extra nutritious food and that may or may not be what you are getting and paying for at the grocery store.

Tip: if you cannot find the country of origin on the food label, don't buy it. And be careful of labels that indicate a food product is distributed or marketed by an American company, but it is actually grown elsewhere (or fails to specifically state "Product of USA" or similar). So many labels, so little time.