Natural selection

Do you know where your food comes from? How it was produced? How far it traveled before ending up on your plate? It's getting easier to find answers to those questions. Restaurant menus and supermarket food labels now tout the origins of ingredients and make eco-conscious claims such as "pasture-raised" and "certified humane."

Food is a key part of a growing movement in Chicago and across the nation to go "green." In a three-part series starting today, the Sun-Times will also examine the growing interest and investment in eco-friendly homes and transportation.

Sales of organic foods are booming, and not just at specialty stores. Even giant retailers Wal-Mart and Target are offering organic items.

Schools, hospitals and food-service companies increasingly are choosing locally grown and organic foods.

And farmers markets and community-supported agriculture programs, or CSAs, are multiplying: Between 1994 and 2006, there was a 149 percent increase in the number of farmers markets nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service.

Green is growing more popular, but it hasn't been totally embraced by mainstream America. Consider hybrid cars, for instance. These eco-friendlier means of transportation get a lot of attention, but they amounted to just 2 percent of all cars sold in the United States in 2005.

Some people are going green to save the planet, others to save money; some are trying to stay ahead of the trend, others are making a statement.

Eating green -- with a heightened emphasis on knowing more about our food and who's producing it -- "has become more trendy. It's really gone beyond just going to farmers markets," said Paul McRandle, deputy editor of National Geographic's The Green Guide, an online resource for green living.

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