south africa.

I was just about to delve into my afternoon snack - a juicy, bright navel orange. One look at the sticker it was sporting and I stopped dead in my tracks. It read "South Africa Navel #3107". South freakin' Africa?! Are you kidding me? Is there any possible way that this sweet treat I was holding really came all the way from South Africa? And if it did... that is preposterous! Talk about the opposite of eating local - that's halfway around the world!

It's not just the distance the fruit traveled that has my environmental conscious going berserk. According to this report from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, the amount of produce being imported from overseas has skyrocketed in recent years. One out of every five pieces of fresh fruit is grown abroad... doubling from 15 years ago. What's also scary is that the FDA's inspection of imported food is not up to par, meaning imported fruit is four times more likely to have illegal levels of pesticides than domestically grown fruit. Eek!

The lesson I quickly learned was to make it a priority to check the location of produce before I make a purchase. Of course I prefer to buy as locally as possible, but that's not always easy when you live in Michigan. Just today I went to buy apples from my grocery store of choice and noticed they were from New Zealand! I immediately put them down and found some apples from the good ol' US of A. Definitely an eye-opening experience.