How many times have you gone to the grocery store and wondered where that vegetable was grown or where that piece of meat was raised?
Well wonder no more.

Would you be surprised to learn that the meat you're buying spent time in Mexico.

One shopper believed all her meat came from the U.S..

Starting this week you'll know where a lot of your food was grown. a new law requires country of origin information to be displayed on fresh and frozen vegetables, most meats and some kinds of nuts.

The law was originally intended in part to promote us products, but it benefits consumers as well says Jean Halloran of consumer union, “absolutely consumers do care where their food comes from, consumers union conducted its own poll a year ago and found that 92% of consumers would like to know the country of origin for the food they buy.”

Even though supermarkets pull products when tainted food scares occur, experts say the new rules will make consumers smarter shoppers.

Jean Halloran, a consumer, said, “for example where we had this problem last summer with salmonella in peppers from Mexico. in the future we'll be able to avoid buying the peppers from Mexico and go on buying the peppers that come from somewhere else.”

Another shopper said, “its kind of scary these days you hear about milk, i think it was on the news yesterday about chocolate, it was tainted, so now you kind of worry about things.”

In the meat aisle you may find products labeled with more than one country -- for example, cattle raised in Mexico, then exported to the u-s for processing

Many foods, however, will not be required to carry country of origin labels, including processed meats like sausage.

The exemptions can be a bit confusing for example the country of origin must be labeled on raw cashews, but the roasted cashews are exempt.

Frozen vegetables will have to have the labels, but frozen mixed vegetables won’t and spam, sometimes called mystery meat, will be allowed to "remain" a mystery. It’s exempt as well.

Grocery stores will have up to six months in order to comply with the new regulations.