Not long after the pet food from China was in the news for killing a number of cat and dogs here in the states I realized I had this bottle of apple juice in my pantry. If you can't read the stamped on label it say: Concentrate from China. It still sits on my shelf; staring at me.In the market today I noticed two bins of garlic. One filled with loose heads and the other with three heads packaged together. The packaged garlic stated it was a product of China.
Huh? I live in California and Gilroy, the Garlic Capital, is close, well closer than China. Where does that garlic go? I do understand the global economy but we can't get apple juice and garlic from the west coast? Washington is just brimming with apples, where does that juice go?
China seems to be on the end of some serious recalls from pet food to children's toys. It makes me uneasy to think of food being prepared in countries with safety standards not up to ours. Give me good ole American fresh spinach any time. Oh wait, China doesn't seem to have the market cornered on food contamination. How soon we forget.
So I'm back to my original question, would you drink this? Please take the little survey on the left. I'm really interested in what you have to say.
9 comments:
Nope.
Absolutely not.
Yes, there is the fear that this product could be contaminated in some way, coming from a country which appears to not be too careful about health/safety regulations, but frankly, I don't drink bottled juices as I find them too sweet. We have an old juicer that is almost 15yo now but still works as well as when it was brand new, and after a lifetime of drinking fresh juice, I can't really tolerate stuff that isn't fresh :/
That's just my personal opinion though :/
(and I sympathize on the garlic issue - I tried looking for Aussie-grown garlic a few months back and could only find it at the macrobiotic foods store! How sad is that! Every other greengrocer/supermarket had imported Chinese produce!)
Ellie, I do agree about drinking the juice. What I buy it for is brining my pork roasts, quite handy and then I cut it with water.
I am really watching products of any kind, not just food, from China until we see some serious concern for delivering safe and quality goods.
No ... I think we've all got to really work on buying local / local-ish foods, because aspects of the global economy have gone mad, and food is the number one area for that. And, yes, we all have food safety concerns from time to time, but that should make us think harder about cooking from scratch as much as we can, rather than relying on industry to provide us with - well, who knows what? But it's hard, all that label reading all the time ... and all that talking brightly to the supermarket section manager who is thinking "here's another mad customer to humour". Ho hum
Is there any difference, really, between say, a European drinking Australian wine and drinking Chinese apple juice?
I'm not sure how much environment damage is done by shipping concentrate around the world - I suspect not that much. I also suspect that the risk of contamination is tiny, you're probably more likely to harm yourself by accidentally dropping the carton on your foot than drinking it.
is it lead free?
Ritardo, that's the problem, is it lead free?
I have become quite conscious about foods and where they come from. I am on the last chapter of the book Omnivore's Dilemmawhich is a true eye opener in regards to what's in our food grown/produced here in the US. Good read.
no way! Best to buy American!
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