Do you really know/understand where your food comes from?

Not every single piece of food I eat, but yes, I know where food, in general, comes from.

I know how most of the food I eat gets to me. There may be a few things that I don’t know the whole process for, but I have at least a general idea of even those things. Then there are probably a few things that I’m clueless about too. :)

I’m much more aware now than I was a couple years ago. I thought that my sugar intake was a lot, but I started an online food diary that tells me what’s in my food and my sodium intake was wayyy more than I thought it was. There’s a local fast food chain in the Northwest that has started putting nutritional information of all the food you ordered in the reciept. I thought that was really cool. Now I want a strawberry shortcake.

I know that most canned foods have BPA.

@py_sue Online food diary sounds like a great idea!

I’m not totally aware, especially now I live abroad and have greater trouble reading labels, but it’s something I think about. Since I have lived in South Korea I haven’t done too much research on the matter, but I definitely should!

Certainly not completely. Probably mostly by choice. Most of the time, when I learn about these things, I lose interest in the product.

I fear the time when my food choices get to the point that I only feel willing to eat produce grown in my own garden or meats and dairy produced by a trusted source.

This is one of the hazards of our present-day food production and distribution systems, and perhaps one of the few reasons I wish I lived in a gentler era.

Thankfully, I do thanks to Michael Pollan’s books and this book as well as other sources.

I know the dairy comes from a local dairy. I buy most of my fresh veggies from the back of a pickup truck from a farmer. My frozen veggies and meat come from the market so I know less about them.

I do, especially after watching Food, Inc., a film I recommend that everyone watch. (it has Michael Pollan in it)

I’m an analytical eater. So if I’m about to eat something I usually try to figure it out all the ingredients(Especially the quality) used in the the process of cooking,the cooking process itself,the hygiene level of the dish,etc. I prefer to eat in places where the promote healthy food instead of tasty food(I’m a vegetarian anyway). It would be better if they exposed their qualities of their place,like: 100% Organic materials,not something like: The tastiest food in….
Although in some places you should have already known about the food the sold by the locals and asking about that would be very offending/unacceptable.

@kevbo Do those books deal solely with the American food industry, or are they worth a read for those of us elsewhere too? @MissAnthrope Ditto for the movie you mention.

Yes and that’s why we’re vegans.

I recently watched a very good documentary called Food Inc. about the corporate controlled food industry here in America. It was both enlightening and quite disturbing on many levels and if this is where a lot of my food is coming from, I’m not very comfortable with much of it. It looks like it’s time to start going mostly organic whenever I can.

@Bluefreedom

I JUST watched Food Inc. last night and while not overly suprised I was enlightened to more than I was previously aware of.

I was blown away by the ‘ownership’ of genetically engineered soy beans and the B.S. those farmers had to endure…what a crock of shit!

That one poor farmer who opted out of the corporate seed scene & continued to collect his own seed and then was still harassed because the natural pollen dispersal of the genetically engineered seed made it’s way to his fields…. freakin’ crazy….! :-0

I am fortunate to live rural and have lots of local produce and farmers markets to ‘capitalize’ on.

I am farm sitting for my neighbors this week and collecting all their free range eggs from their hens…can’t wait to share!

I have been told that it comes from the depths of hell when I cook ;)

My family and I have read all the books, seen all the movies and collected all the pertinent data. I am eating only what I buy at the local Food coop, I eschew the organic strawberries that I see were shipped from CA. I eat what is seasonally available and what has been moved only 100 miles.

Read Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” for a personal take rather than a broad sweep.

@Coloma. I just remembered another documentary that you would probably like and it is called The Future of Food. It goes more into depth on Monsanto and their spurious business practices and the ‘ownership’ of seeds’ plus many, many other things. I highly recommend it.

I mostly do. I work at the farm where I buy much of it.

Now if I shop elsewhere, or go to a restaurant – not so much.

Did you say ‘wrestled from the earth’? Did I miss a soybean smackdown?

Thing is there are NO natural soybeans left…I don’t trust the genetically engineered ones to have nearly any of soybeans original benefits. So even the organic people touting soy products are not being honest. Bah humbug!

A crop of soybeans every week…

@Coloma Do you also avoid corn – one of the most genetically engineered food of our time? I suppose you eat apples – yet they are nowhere near the original plant.

@YARNLADY

I am not extremist about anything, just interesting, that’s all.

Just adding this since @YARNLADY mentioned corn and I found this tidbit I learned in my Plant & Soil Science class to be really interesting.. but apparently corn is the first 100% human-engineered crop, even 100+ years ago, well before people were fiddling with genes in a lab. There is no such thing as wild corn and it seems that humans used selective breeding to bring about ears of corn. They think the original species was teocinte, a type of ancient grain that bears little resemblance to the corn we know today.

@MissAnthrope

Yes, true, but there is a big dif between selective breeding and genetic mutation/alteration of foods.

One of the things that shocked me in Food Inc. was the government not being required to label meat that has been cloned.

It’s bad enough that there is so much disease and cruelty in the factory farming scene let alone feeding the public monster meat. Gah….

I eat ONLY genetically modified foods… captain crunch for instance.