Made in the U.S.A.

I want you to go around your house and look at the tags on your furniture, home decor, children's toys and clothes. Where are they made? I took a trip around my house after reading this article. I found that the majority of things in our house come from China. It made me want to cry.

I used to work at a home decor store. As I unpacked boxes, I found two very disheartening things in common:

1)everything was made poorly and

2)everything was made in another country. Of course 95% was made in China. Remember them? I also found that the amount of packaging with Styrofoam and plastic is in an abundance. I won't go into the fact that I saw WALL-E yesterday and I believe we are going to bury ourselves in packaging. I'll save that for another post.

Back to China, they poisoned our small children with their poor craftsmanship of toys. Surely you haven't forgotten the recalls, but the good ole USA companies are still outsourcing. Not only to China, but to India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam to name a few. And it's worst than that, watch this YouTube clip.

If you're not upset by the state of our economy and watching friends and family members get laid off doesn't bother you, then you might want to look at what your putting into you very own body. I realize you have seen the benefits of genetically engineered foods, but that's not the whole story. Anne over at Twice Bloomed Wisteria has told us all about how the genetically modified corn effects the bees and your honey. You might want to read this article and decide if you want to eat the food others are growing. Also, there's a book that discusses the way we eat called Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer, Jim Mason.

Jayedee over at Life in the Lost World turned me onto the 100 Foot Diet Challenge. It is really very interesting. It doesn't take that much room to grow a few veggies and fruits for your family, Hell, I'm doing it and I haven't got a clue, but you've seen how much were getting from an 8 by 30 foot piece of land. This is only our second year to have a garden and we're feeding more than our family with what we're growing. This year my goal is to learn to can!

I know that this is pretty scary stuff, but I don't think I can sit back and ignore what's going on around me. If the outsourcing of jobs does effect you and if our food is being shipped in, out of season, from half way around the world doesn't bother you and if we buy it with out asking questions we are contributing to the problem.

If you can't grow anything please buy local and try to buy made in the U.S.A. Also, you should check out this Wall Street Journal article on 50 Things being Blamed on Rising Oil Prices.