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Only 15% of the US food supply is imported. [0] 0: https://www.fda.gov/food/importing-food-products-united-states/fda-strategy-safety-imported-food https://www

Only 15% of the US food supply is imported. [0] 0: https://www.fda.gov/food/importing-food-products-united-states/fda-strategy-safety-imported-food https://www.fda.gov/food/importing-food-products-united-stat...

shepherdjerred 4y ago
I wonder how they measure that. Is it by calories, weight, cost?
- pengaru 4y ago
  If it's calories that's a pretty easy game for corn syrup to win...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pengaru 4y ago
Whatever the stats I personally struggle to source domestic food for the things I consume, especially if trying to keep costs low. Avocados come from Mexico, most tree nuts come from Asia, canned fish from Asia or Canada and sometimes Morocco. I've met low-income anti-Mexican bigots who have entirely altered their diets to not include much produce, despite liking produce, because most the affordable produce available to them comes from Mexico. At least Florida oranges are still commonplace, but even cheap oranges are often carrying grown in Mexico stickers. I'm lucky to be in CA where I can pretty reliably access (and afford) CCOF produce at the organics shop. But when I go to the Safeway-echelon grocers, even in the organics section, the US is not well represented.
- ldh0011 4y ago
  Ok preferring to support local agriculture is one thing, and probably admirable in many cases, but how much of an idiot does someone have to be to stop eating produce because it comes from Mexico :facepalm:. Being less healthy is really showing them!
  - pengaru 4y ago
    One person I'm thinking of in particular said she didn't believe the water was safe to drink there, so how could the produce be safe to eat? She was elderly and had learned long ago not to drink the water when traveling in Mexico. But I'm sure there was a bunch of unstated racism underneath that, just based on who she was... Personally I don't like consuming food grown in China because if the world has outsourced all its polluting industrial activities to China, it seems likely the food has more toxins in it. Just the air pollution there alone has to permeate the food grown outdoors and all the soil.
    - ldh0011 4y ago
      Yeah the pollution angle actually makes sense to me with my layman's knowledge of agriculture. Though with water specifically I wonder if Mexican (tap?) water being unsafe for humans to drink translates to the water they use for crops being less safe than American crop water. This piqued my interest on Mexican agriculture though and I found this relatively recent gem... US lobbyists trying to get the US government to bully Mexico into having less stringent food safety measures. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/16/revealed-monsanto-mexico-us-glyphosate-ban https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/16/revealed-mo...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - jolmg 4y ago
      > One person I'm thinking of in particular said she didn't believe the water was safe to drink there I mean, if she meant water from the tap, it's true that it's generally not considered potable. It's clean enough for everything it's needed for, but it's just common sense to people to not drink from it. Expecting to be able to is weird because it's different. Seems kind of exorbitant to have something like potable tap water, like I'd imagine it'd be exorbitant for people that have it to upgrade to distilled tap water. The public tap water supplies being able to maintain water end-to-end pure enough to be perfectly consumable by humans is a bar probably nobody is concerned for them to surpass, because it's not really a problem. The tap is used for everything you generally use it for elsewhere, including washing fruits, veggies, and rice. There's no problem consuming small quantities (e.g. washing teeth, using a glass that hasn't finished drying, etc.), but nobody drinks or serves a glass of water from the tap. People fill 5-gallon jugs of water at purifiers or exchange them at convenience stores and use that for drinking water and e.g. making soups, boiling/steaming foods, cooking pasta, etc. > so how could the produce be safe to eat? Did she mean the water it was grown with? If she did, yeah that's ridiculous. That water has to seep through the earth, so what does it matter? Why need to dump potable water? Also, a whole nation and more are living off that produce.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

I wonder how they measure that. Is it by calories, weight, cost?

pengaru 4y ago
If it's calories that's a pretty easy game for corn syrup to win...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pengaru 4y ago

Whatever the stats I personally struggle to source domestic food for the things I consume, especially if trying to keep costs low. Avocados come from Mexico, most tree nuts come from Asia, canned fish from Asia or Canada and sometimes Morocco. I've met low-income anti-Mexican bigots who have entirely altered their diets to not include much produce, despite liking produce, because most the affordable produce available to them comes from Mexico. At least Florida oranges are still commonplace, but even cheap oranges are often carrying grown in Mexico stickers. I'm lucky to be in CA where I can pretty reliably access (and afford) CCOF produce at the organics shop. But when I go to the Safeway-echelon grocers, even in the organics section, the US is not well represented.

ldh0011 4y ago
Ok preferring to support local agriculture is one thing, and probably admirable in many cases, but how much of an idiot does someone have to be to stop eating produce because it comes from Mexico :facepalm:. Being less healthy is really showing them!
- pengaru 4y ago
  One person I'm thinking of in particular said she didn't believe the water was safe to drink there, so how could the produce be safe to eat? She was elderly and had learned long ago not to drink the water when traveling in Mexico. But I'm sure there was a bunch of unstated racism underneath that, just based on who she was... Personally I don't like consuming food grown in China because if the world has outsourced all its polluting industrial activities to China, it seems likely the food has more toxins in it. Just the air pollution there alone has to permeate the food grown outdoors and all the soil.
  - ldh0011 4y ago
    Yeah the pollution angle actually makes sense to me with my layman's knowledge of agriculture. Though with water specifically I wonder if Mexican (tap?) water being unsafe for humans to drink translates to the water they use for crops being less safe than American crop water. This piqued my interest on Mexican agriculture though and I found this relatively recent gem... US lobbyists trying to get the US government to bully Mexico into having less stringent food safety measures. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/16/revealed-monsanto-mexico-us-glyphosate-ban https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/16/revealed-mo...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jolmg 4y ago
    > One person I'm thinking of in particular said she didn't believe the water was safe to drink there I mean, if she meant water from the tap, it's true that it's generally not considered potable. It's clean enough for everything it's needed for, but it's just common sense to people to not drink from it. Expecting to be able to is weird because it's different. Seems kind of exorbitant to have something like potable tap water, like I'd imagine it'd be exorbitant for people that have it to upgrade to distilled tap water. The public tap water supplies being able to maintain water end-to-end pure enough to be perfectly consumable by humans is a bar probably nobody is concerned for them to surpass, because it's not really a problem. The tap is used for everything you generally use it for elsewhere, including washing fruits, veggies, and rice. There's no problem consuming small quantities (e.g. washing teeth, using a glass that hasn't finished drying, etc.), but nobody drinks or serves a glass of water from the tap. People fill 5-gallon jugs of water at purifiers or exchange them at convenience stores and use that for drinking water and e.g. making soups, boiling/steaming foods, cooking pasta, etc. > so how could the produce be safe to eat? Did she mean the water it was grown with? If she did, yeah that's ridiculous. That water has to seep through the earth, so what does it matter? Why need to dump potable water? Also, a whole nation and more are living off that produce.