The best way to know your food you is to purchase it directly from the people who produce it.  The farmer who grew your salad or raised the chicken you’re roasting for dinner.  The artisan who made the cheese that’s going into the omelette you’re making with the eggs that came from the farmer who also grew the potatoes you’re going to eat on the side.

That’s why we created Local Orbit and our sellers are committed to our core standards.

However, we can’t always get to a farmers market (and Local Orbit isn’t widely available – yet!),  and there are plenty of foods you can’t buy locally.  The trick is figuring out, in the words of Good Guide’s Transparency Manifesto, three simple things everyone should know about their food but don’t: Where did it come from? How was it made? What’s in it?

As Collin Dunn writes in Treehugger, Labels on food items are as numerous as the aisles they’re sold in, and many proclaim that they’re helping you be healthy, helping the planet, or both. The truth is that there are myriad labels out there that aren’t worth the shiny sticker they’re printed on; certifications that promise to be “all-something” or “whatever-free” that aren’t under any government or third-party oversight, free to be molded and marketed by anyone who puts a product on a shelf.

You don’t have to put up with that, though. Here are seven certifications that’ll help guide you to green food enlightenment.

From Pringles to starfruit, you can learn about specific products on the Good Guide site – and you can use their mobile applications to help you at the grocery store.

For fish and seafood, the Environmental Defense Fund’s mobile seafood selector is really useful.  For fruits and veggies, check out the Environmental Working Group’s shoppers guide to pesticides.

The simplest guide to avoiding confusion: if you don’t know where it comes from, choose something else.