# Read Those Can Labels



## oregon woodsmok (Dec 19, 2010)

I asked my son to stop on his way home from work and pick me up a can of mandarin oranges. He came home with a bag of fresh tangerines.

All the canned mandarin oranges, every brand, were canned in China.

As far as I know, all canned mushrooms are canned in China. China has taken over the world's production of apple juice. China under-priced on garlic so badly that it shut down all the local garlic growers here; it's a big project to find American grown garlic. The American garlic is still available, but it is getting harder to find.

Oh well, at least my home grown stuff is grown and packaged in America and I _know_ that the grower isn't going to poison me.


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## Dave in Ohio (Jun 11, 2002)

Hence the reason for stored canned goods, by the time I get to the newer canned foods, I have been made aware of any recalls before I eat any. Like the Castlebury chili dog sauce recall, I had several cans that were of the lot numbers that were bad, but since I stock it, I had many cans that would have been used before getting to them so I was able to pull the stock and get a refund...yes most stuff is made and canned in China...not much we can do about it....just buy enough so that all recalls will be several cans behind what already have stored.


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## Our Little Farm (Apr 26, 2010)

My canned mushrooms come from PA. They are portabella pieces. Delicious!


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## tab (Aug 20, 2002)

I get a lot of domestic products through the co-op. Most are organic. They promote fair trade products for items like coffee and cocoa. I will have to look up what the website is.


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## jessepona (Sep 7, 2005)

I've been seeing this to with apple juice and applesauce, honey and oils. I try not to buy food from other countries where pesticides containing heavy metals like lead and cadmium as well as known carcinogens are legal and present at high levels in the fruit and veg they produce. Anyway, I live just miles away from one of the best apple producing regions in the US- Michigan (I'm biased, I know). Why on Earth would I want to buy apple products from China? Craziness. 


http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-news-watch/article/Fears-rise-over-heavy-metals-in-mainland-rice 

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/docs/pesticides_feb28.pdf

ETA: And the applesauce we make from those local, fresh apples is so wonderful my four year old daughter re-named it Awesome-Sauce ;D


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## Ohio dreamer (Apr 6, 2006)

Our Little Farm said:


> My canned mushrooms come from PA. They are portabella pieces. Delicious!


Brand?? Source?? Portabellas are worth an up-charge!!


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## tab (Aug 20, 2002)

Someone has a sharp eye as to labels! The mandarin oranges on the shelf have "Product of China" on the label.


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## unregistered29228 (Jan 9, 2008)

I get canned mushrooms from Costco that are "product of USA" so that's the only brand I buy. I've gotten a lot stricter about reading labels over the last few years and try to never buy anything from China. I waffle back and forth on products from Thailand and India although I do buy them sometimes. I do worry about the contents if I don't know for sure how they use pesticides or what kind of water the fish was raised in.


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## beaglebiz (Aug 5, 2008)

Our Little Farm said:


> My canned mushrooms come from PA. They are portabella pieces. Delicious!


What brand OLF??
Our "Pa Dutch" brand are sadly product of China.
Im always trying to find canned shrooms. Last summer I bought a huge basket in Lancaster and dehydrated some and pressure canned some.
Thanks


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## beaglebiz (Aug 5, 2008)

Mom_of_Four said:


> I get canned mushrooms from Costco that are "product of USA" so that's the only brand I buy. I've gotten a lot stricter about reading labels over the last few years and try to never buy anything from China. I waffle back and forth on products from Thailand and India although I do buy them sometimes. I do worry about the contents if I don't know for sure how they use pesticides or what kind of water the fish was raised in.


we dont have costco either. Is it a specific brand or just the costco label??

Just thought Id mention...good luck to folks trying to find canned hawaiian pineapple. Its all Phillipines, malaysia, china etc


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## marinemomtatt (Oct 8, 2006)

Canned goods are at least labeled with country of origin, I wish the same could be said of fresh produce (some stores will have a little sign...a VERY little sign, but many stores don't). I hate buying anything that was grown south of the American border, because of the pesticides and herbicides used down that way.

Apples.... PNW apples are the best....~lol~... Pears too.


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

ahem...Eastern Apples have more flavor!! Yes I am biased but there is a world of difference in the flavor of an Eastern Yellow Delicious apple and a Western one... I will grant you the Western Ones are "prettier".....

Mushrooms; Giorgio brand stems and pieces are packed in Pa; Pa Dutchman (packed by Giorgio) stems and pieces are American...ONLY the stems and pieces..sliced buttons and whole buttons are from China. I bought Giorgio brand only a couple weeks ago....

Mandarin Oranges have been a chinese product forever and the situation with pineapple has too. Most asperagus comes from Peru; off season fruits from Chile and even Isreal.

If I can't find tilapia from US I will buy Equador but never again china.


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## beaglebiz (Aug 5, 2008)

bee said:


> If I can't find tilapia from US I will buy Equador but never again china.


I agree about the apples...nothing like a NY cortland...
I dont even buy tilapia anymore. The fish live in the rice paddies, and who knows what they are using as fertilizer (melamine?? yucko)
also, the Pa Dutchman brand was what I was referring to...I must have looked at the whole and sliced buttons...didnt know the pieces were PA...thanks for the info!!


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

The south american tilapia are pond farmed I think...I don't think THEY have rice paddies???


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## beaglebiz (Aug 5, 2008)

saw this

http://www.mytilapia.com/tilapia_fact.aspx
Commercially grown tilapia are almost exclusively male. Cultivators use hormones such as testosterone to reverse the sex of newly spawned females. Because tilapia are prolific breeders, the presence of female tilapia results in rapidly increasing populations of small fish, rather than a stable population of harvest-size animals.[10]

However, farm raised tilapia (the least expensive and most popular) has a high fat content (though low in saturated fats). According to research published in July 2008, farm raised tilapia may be worse for the heart than eating bacon or a hamburger. The research suggests the nutritional value of farm raised tilapia may be compromised by the amount of corn included in the feed. The corn contains short chain omega-6s that contribute to the buildup of these materials in the fish. "Ratios of long-chain omega-6 to long-chain omega-3


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

geeezzz....sometimes the internet is..:tmi:

Please don't investigate CHOCOLATE...I don't think I could stand it :stars:


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

Funny you should mention it. The canned mushrooms we have were canned in Indonesia. I was feeling bad yesterday after using some in spaghetti sauce and had reason to wonder about the little bubbles that were in the can as I opened it. The can wasn't bulging and it was well within date.


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## hsmom2four (Oct 13, 2008)

I hope he checked the label on the tangerines. A lot of fresh citrus comes from S. Africa and Brazil. Pretty near putting the FL citrus farmers out of business. Mandarins have pretty much always come from China (hence the name). I think a few are grown in CA but its not really something that's grown in the USA. If the trees get cross polinated with other varieties then they can start having seeds which is not desirable for Mandarins.


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## manygoatsnmore (Feb 12, 2005)

Oh, nothing beats the flavor of a Washington grown Fuji, Gala, Honeycrisp or Pink Lady!  Can't stand Red Delicious, though, no matter where it's grown. All tough skin for shipping and mushy flesh, no apple flavor, just blah, bland sweet.

All the foods coming out of China are just one more reason to grow and preserve my own. Pressing cider, canning applesauce and dehydrating apple slices from home grown (or at least locally raised) apples means I know exactly what is in my food.

Can't grow my own mandarins without a greenhouse, though...but I've started looking at country of origin for both cans and fresh. I'd rather go without them than continue to support foreign ag that doesn't have to meet US standards.


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

oregon woodsmok said:


> All the canned mandarin oranges, every brand, were canned in China.





bee said:


> Mandarin Oranges have been a chinese product forever





hsmom2four said:


> Mandarins have pretty much always come from China (hence the name)


If you want "Mandarin" oranges, especially canned ones, I'd expect them to come from China... Mandarin oranges are a Chinese product.

I'd not go looking for pecans grown in China.


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## Patt (May 18, 2003)

Fish is hard to find now too that isn't processed in China or shrimp. 

I would have thought Mandarin oranges would have always been from China though.


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## unregistered29228 (Jan 9, 2008)

beaglebiz said:


> we dont have costco either. Is it a specific brand or just the costco label??
> 
> Just thought Id mention...good luck to folks trying to find canned hawaiian pineapple. Its all Phillipines, malaysia, china etc


With Dole pineapples being grown all over Hawaii (I saw them myself in the 80s), why aren't there US grown and packed pineapples??

Just ran out there to look at the mushrooms - they're Giorgio "America's favorite since 1928". Here's a link with a photo of the label. I think I paid $8 for 24 4-oz cans and they're slices, not pieces and stems.

http://www.giorgiofoods.com/index.php?p=89


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## beaglebiz (Aug 5, 2008)

Dole closed their cannery in the 90's...its now apartments and shops


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## MO_cows (Aug 14, 2010)

I bought Post brand whole wheat biscuits, the "original shredded wheat". Got it home and noticed it was a product of Canada. I live right next door to Kansas, they produce more wheat in that state than in many countries. No wonder food is expensive, the freight on some items costs more than the actual food I bet. 

Read an article once about a university study on food. They found the average item on America's dinner table had traveled 1500 miles and changed hands 6 times. That is just ridiculous, there are farms outside of virtually every major city. 

Exotic and out of season produce is gonna have to be imported but there is a whole lot more imported food than there needs to be.


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

Mom of Four; if you go to the About Us section of the Giorgio website you will find that they say they grow "virtully all" of their own mushrooms..not all.

I am glad you were fortunate to find American mushroms in other than stems and pieces, but the stores I have access too only had china mushrooms in Giorgio labeled jars and cans for everything but the stems and pieces. I stood there and read every label and showed them to my Mom. I think I will contact the company for clarification..the price you paid seems like a good one especially for sliced buttons!


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## Oldcountryboy (Feb 23, 2008)

For all of you who have been canning mushrooms, why don't you dehydrate them?

They re-hydrate very well. One time while I was out deer hunting I came upon a dead sycamore tree that had oyster mushrooms growing all up and down on it. I loaded my backpack as full as I could get it with mushrooms and the next day I loaded my backpack half full with more. I took them home, washed them up and then dehydrated them. I kept them in ziplock bags way up high in the pantry and we ate on them all winter long. We used them in casserole dishes, soups, and of coarse we battered them and pan fryed also.


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## beaglebiz (Aug 5, 2008)

Oldcountryboy said:


> For all of you who have been canning mushrooms, why don't you dehydrate them?
> 
> They re-hydrate very well. One time while I was out deer hunting I came upon a dead sycamore tree that had oyster mushrooms growing all up and down on it. I loaded my backpack as full as I could get it with mushrooms and the next day I loaded my backpack half full with more. I took them home, washed them up and then dehydrated them. I kept them in ziplock bags way up high in the pantry and we ate on them all winter long. We used them in casserole dishes, soups, and of coarse we battered them and pan fryed also.


I dehydrate some every year. Some of my Polish recipes specifically call for dried mushrooms. I put them in a jar with an o2 absorber.
sometimes its just nice to open a small can to top your pizza.

Wish I found a backpack full of oyster mushrooms...lucky you


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## unregistered65598 (Oct 4, 2010)

marinemomtatt said:


> Canned goods are at least labeled with country of origin, I wish the same could be said of fresh produce (some stores will have a little sign...a VERY little sign, but many stores don't). I hate buying anything that was grown south of the American border, because of the pesticides and herbicides used down that way.
> 
> Apples.... PNW apples are the best....~lol~... Pears too.


You should let the store manager know that they can be fined a very large fine for not displaying where the produce came from, do make sure you check the stickers on the produce, because if it is stated on the sticker, then they do not have to post a sign.


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## unregistered29228 (Jan 9, 2008)

bee said:


> Mom of Four; if you go to the About Us section of the Giorgio website you will find that they say they grow "virtully all" of their own mushrooms..not all.
> 
> I am glad you were fortunate to find American mushroms in other than stems and pieces, but the stores I have access too only had china mushrooms in Giorgio labeled jars and cans for everything but the stems and pieces. I stood there and read every label and showed them to my Mom. I think I will contact the company for clarification..the price you paid seems like a good one especially for sliced buttons!


Don't quote me on the price, but I do think that's what I remember from the last time I went.

Let me know if you find out the ones I've been buying are Chinese. I'll probably still use them since there aren't any USA choices, but I'll be firing off a complaint email to Giorgio.


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## oregon woodsmok (Dec 19, 2010)

My bag of tangerines were grown and packaged in California.

I will buy and eat imported food. I buy produce from Mexico and Chile. I eat grain and beef from Canada. I have no qualms about any foodstuff from Israel.

It's just that the Chinese don't seem to care who or what they kill and it's not just their exported food. They'll poison their own babies, too.


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