Where does my food come from?

I try to be fairly conscious of where my food is coming from--both for environmental and taste reasons. I spent a few days taking down the origins of some of the common foods that I eat.

What I learned is that it's really difficult to track where your food comes from, especially if it's processed in any way. It took a really long time to figure out where my Honey Nut Cheerios are from. In the end, I think they're from somewhere in Illinois, but I'm not sure. Basically, everything that's owned by General Mills just has the corporate headquarters for General Mills on the back, not where the ingredients came from or where it was made.

I was pretty disappointed in Berkeley Farms. I buy a lot of BF products and I kind of assumed they were all from this part of California--I guess it was the Berkeley name that sort of distracted me from really checking the labels. In reality, the products are from several places, and my favorite milk, "Over the Moon" fat free milk is actually processed in Texas. Even though I love the Over the Moon, I think I might make the switch back to Clover Stornetta, their products all come from the same area in California.

As far as produce, about half of them had a sticker with the area of origin on it. Many did not--pears, oranges, tomatoes, potatoes, etc., I never know where they come from if they aren't from the farmers market.

Overall, I think I do pretty well in getting my food from California, but I realized that a lot of my food comes from Central and South America as well. I think that a lot of my produce is from Mexico because I shop at Suvianda most of the year. Luckily, it's almost prime farmers market season so I can do better at eating local.