Avoiding Chinese food products nearly impossible - CNN

Avoiding Chinese food products nearly impossible

Few people read labels as closely as Sara Bongiorni. For a year, Bongiorni and her young family tried to go without buying anything produced in China. No shoes, no toys, not even mousetraps.

The Baton Rouge, Louisiana, mother of three wasn't trying to make a political statement. She just wanted to see if it was possible to remove "Made in China" products from her home.

"It was a way to try to understand in a very real and personal way my own family's connections to this big fuzzy concept of the global economy, and specifically to China," she told CNN.

The experiment started soon after Christmas 2004 as she sorted through gifts and wrapping paper. Looking around the heap of goods, she realized almost all of it came from China.

"I thought, you know, it would be fun just to see if we could go a whole year ... without China," she said. "It certainly took over our whole life. It became an all-consuming project."

It was tough at times. Like when 10 months into the project, she caved into her 4-year-old son who "fell head over heels in love with a Chinese-made electric pumpkin."

But the one area that posed an unexpected challenge was grocery shopping. She says it's almost impossible to tell which foods have ingredients from China. Watch grocery shopping with Bongiorni

"As much label reading as I did, there's no way I could know whether or not I was buying something with ingredients from China," says Bongiorni, who documented her experience in a book, "A Year Without 'Made in China.' "

Across the nation, Americans have begun taking a more critical look at where their food comes from, especially food from China. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found 46 percent of those polled are "very concerned" about the safety of food imported from China; another 28 percent said they were "somewhat concerned" about Chinese food products.

The amount of food imported from China has grown dramatically in the past decade. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the United States imported $4.1 billion worth of seafood and agricultural products from China in 2006. In 1995, it was $800 million.

In June, the United States banned five types of fish and shrimp from China because inspectors found traces of cancer-causing chemicals and antibiotics in the products. See products that have been affected.