Quick--Where Does Your Food Come From?!

By Dean Williamson, 5-10-09

Global Grocer:  An instant quiz on the origins of what we eat.

A frightful—if edifying—site I’ve just stumbled upon is the Global Grocer site, from Food and Water Watch (FAWW has long been sounding the alarms about our food and water systems; for instance, leading a charge against bottled water).

Global Grocer lets you shop the virtual aisles of a store, filling your cart with the food you want, and tons of information about where that food comes from. 

I found out, somewhat surprisingly, that half our garlic is imported, mainly from China.  Two-thirds of our orange juice is brought in from Brazil. 

It’s a very cool, and daunting, site which reminds us that most of what is in grocery stores is not only not local, but it has significant external costs (think thousands of miles traveled to get to our mouths).