My First Day on Blogger/ Product of USA/ Mom's Musings

Hey There,

Glad you made your way over here. :)

I wanted to create this space to inform you of any information you might want to know for your family's sake.

Right now I am focused on food and other consumables. I believe we need better country of origin labels so that as consumers we know where the products are coming from that we consume. Just seems to make sense to me. If I can turn over the label on my shirt and see where it is made, I should be able to do the same with my food, makeup, lotions etc.

Having said that, knowing where something is "made" like a shirt is not the same kind of made that I am talking about. I'm talking about the kind of made that tells me where the ingredients are from. Seriously, knowing that bread is "Made in the USA" doesn't tell me a darn thing about where the ingredients come from! Believe it or not, there are plenty of food items that might have "Made in the USA" on the label but the ingredients to make that item are actually sourced from other countries.

Here is an example

Sorry that I couldn't find a bigger picture, but on Martin's bread it says very clearly "Made in USA" and I think some of their breads even have an American Flag on it, but yet they source their ingredients from other countries! Martin's Bread is not the only one doing this, there are a lot of companies who put Made in the USA on the label. We think one thing, that all the ingredients come from the USA if it says Made in the USA on the label, and corporate thinks something else. This is their thinking... hey we really did make it here (just didn't tell you the part about the ingredients coming from other countries).

If you want to purchase something where the ingredients are coming from the USA, then you need to look for "Product of USA" on the label. That's your best chance at getting ingredients from the USA. Kettle Chips has it if you are looking for a chip alternative

and Paul Newman's Pasta Sauce has it too (at least the particular ones I bought did). What's really neat too about Paul Newman's is not only does it taste pretty darn good, they also give a good chunk of change to charity from their sales. Not sure if all their products are a product of USA, maybe someone could email me and let me know.

In short, Made In USA means zero to a person concerned with ingredients coming from other countries. What you need to look for is Product of USA instead. They are harder to come by but they are there if you look.

The next topic I will be talking about is the weird way Country of Origin labels work with food..

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Wanted to start another area for just random thoughts that come to mind. I'm calling it Mom's Musings. I needed to start this area because as I researched the area on food coming from Japan and China, which I had no idea was happening, I started running across different issues that I thought were also worth talking about.

Musing #1- GE

I found it really interesting to read that GE made a lot of the nuclear power plants that are now getting old and failing. Now what is happening? GE is investing over $1 Billion in cancer research.

http://news.yahoo.com/ge-invest-1-billion-cancer-research-133252266.html

That's interesting...

Wonder what they are going to find? That their failing nuclear plants leaking cancer causing material to contaminate the air, water, and soil around their plants are part of the reason people get cancer?

Or maybe it is their way of giving back? Let's see...a lot of people are going to get cancer b/c of what we have done, how can we help... Let's invest in cancer research to see how if we can undo the damage we've done.

Musing #2- Cloned Pig in China

Interesting story today about China cloning a very special pig. Scientists in the southern city of Shenzhen performed the experiment on Zhu Jianqiang, or "Strong-Willed Pig", and produced six offspring with DNA identical to their dad, who was hailed as a national hero. "His offspring reportedly bear a striking resemblance to their dad, including a birthmark between their eyes".

http://news.yahoo.com/china-clones-castrated-quake-hero-pig-103239052.html

Sounds almost as if they were talking about people. That got me thinking, wasn't there another time in history where another group of people wanted to set out to build a superhuman race? Pretty good read at the link below. The difference between then and now is that now there is cloning technologies available.

http://www.netlink.de/gen/Zeitung/970227a.htm

MSNBC report on Cloning- Beyond Dolly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3076915/ns/health-special_reports/#.TnYeyxw_JEA

Not sure I understand this article, but I ran across it so I thought I would include it as well.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17514-evolution-machine-speeds-up-search-for-better-bugs.html

Musing #3- Drilling for Oil

Wonder what happens when oil is drilled out of the ground? Does something fill it to take its place? If oil is sucked out, does something like soil then collapse in to fill in the gaps? With that filling in, happening in so many places over the course of time, does that cause more earthquakes as the shifting of soil happens?