Sunday, July 3, 2011

Do you know where your food REALLY comes from?

Allow me to generalize a bit. Most people don't think about where their food comes from beyond the grocery store. They may have their favorite stores based upon personal experience, convenience of location, cleanliness, or sometimes even based upon the company's ethics. Who really thinks about where their food is manufactured? Where does the grain come from that goes into your child's cereal or the bread in their pb&j sandwich? Where were the chickens raised, that ultimately ended up on your dinner table? What did they eat? What were they injected with before and after slaughter? That hamburger you're eating. The hotdog, sausage, pork chop, salmon fillet. What happened to that animal before it ended up on your table? Vegetarian? Ok, what farm did your salad greens come from? What pesticides were used? What fertilizer? How long ago did it leave the farm and start the long trip to your grocer's shelf?

The saying "you are what you eat" isn't just a catch phrase. Its quite literal in fact. If the animal that ultimately ends up on your plate is fed substandard food, it will most likely be in poor health will be lacking in the nutrients that you need to get when you eat it. The other possibility, it was given substandard food so the "farmer" (using that term loosely depending on where the animal came from) may have given it extra hormones so that it looks better in the packaging and you're more likely to buy it. Something that my husband and I weren't aware of until recently, when you buy boneless skinless chicken breasts read the package first. Read the whole thing, because more often than not you will find it listed that it has been "enhanced" with something. Could be chicken broth, could be some chemical that even Mr. Webster couldn't pronounce. That "something" can equal 25% of your daily sodium intake. That's raw chicken, no seasonings, being loaded down with salt. Can we say cankles? High blood pressure? Numerous other health problems brought on by excess sodium? Its long been known that beef is subjected to extra hormones, milk has added hormones, etc etc. Can no one just leave our food alone?

Yes, I am a huge advocate for local farmer's markets. I loved the little ones that we had scattered around my hometown of San Diego (and that was for the ambiance, I didn't research where the products came from), and I adore the one that we have here in Virginia Beach. I enjoy talking to the farmers themselves. The organic grocer who can tell you where all of her products come from, right on down to the organic honey. Now don't get me wrong. Not everything that you find at the farmer's market is exactly... local. Take the butcher for example. We were told that the chicken came from N.Carolina (decently local for us), the beef from the midwest, and I *believe* (don't quote me on this one) that the pork came from PA? I could easily be wrong there though, I was chasing a two year old while my husband talked to one of the employees. The shop was wonderful however, and seeing the meat ground right in front of you is decently reassuring. But I have no idea how those animals lived before they came to the butcher. Had I more time that day, I probably could have asked, and done my due diligence and found out that information. That is the beauty of small businesses, especially the type found at the farmer's markets.

I guess the point of this post is to get whomever reads this to think about where their food comes from, what steps are taken to ensure their food's safety, and to just be concious about what goes into their body overall. I'm stopping this post here because I'm very passionate about the quality of the food that I feed my family, and I have a horrible tendancy to go off on wild, raging tangents.

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