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| Lundberg Organic Brown Long Grain Rice is grown in California, but Della Organic from Costco Wholesale comes from Arkansas. Consumer Reports says some rice growers in the South use old cotton fields, where arsenic was applied to kill boll weevils, leaving traces of the poison in the rice crop. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
We're having a run of bad luck with spoiled food -- from boll weevils in organic brown rice to fruit not ripening or sprouting mold.
Most troublesome are the tiny beetles my wife found when she was preparing Della-brand Organic Long Grain Brown Rice from Costco Wholesale.
When she added chicken broth to the brown rice in an electric cooker, she saw live boll weevils floating to the top.
Old cotton fields?
I recall that when Della brown rice first appeared at my Hackensack Costco, I tried unsuccessfully to reach a company official to find out if it came from old cotton fields in Arkansas.
I stopped buying white rice grown in the South many years ago after Consumer Reports told readers about tests that found traces of arsenic from use of the poison to control boll weevils in cotton fields.
H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain, sells several brands of California-grown white rice, including the deeply discounted Kokuho Yellow Label.
Rice from Amazon
This year, I ordered California-grown Lundberg brown rice from Amazon.com when the Della brand disappeared from the shelves at Costco in Hackensack.
Then, when the Lundberg product finished, I bought another 12-pound bag of Della brown rice, and that's the one with the boll weevils.
This morning, I again ordered Lundberg Organic Brown Long Grain Rice from Amazon.com, even though it is more expensive (about $24 for six 2-pound bags).
Spoiling fruit
Last Sunday, I bought a box of eight jumbo mangoes from Brazil at H Mart in Little Ferry for $9.99.
When my wife cut open two of them, they were brown inside, and I plan to return the spoiled fruit for a full refund today.
A second batch of Jersey peaches from the Paramus ShopRite took days to ripen on the kitchen counter -- like the first -- and were mealy or not that sweet.
One got moldy and had to be thrown away.
