The United Plates of America

On Monday, we can celebrate America the bountiful — state to shining state brimming with everything from Washington apples to Florida orange juice, Alaskan salmon to Vermont maple syrup, not to mention those amber waves of grain. Around the country, legislatures have made some of these food products "official" state emblems, often the result of lobbying groups or student letter-writing campaigns. You can find out about these emblems on individual state Web sites, as well as on sites that have collected information on all the states, such as State History Guide Resources (www.shgresources.com), and Netstate.com, found at www.netstate.com/states, and the Food Timeline (www.foodtimeline.org).

Some emblems aren't that unique — 11 states recognize the white-tailed deer as their official animal or mammal. Utah is one of 16 states that has the honeybee as its official insect, although nobody else can say their territory was first called "Deseret," the Book of Mormon word for "honeybee."

And milk is the official beverage of 17 states. So who says America isn't the land of milk and honey?

Only Rhode Island has coffee milk as an official state drink — described as similar to chocolate milk, but with coffee syrup instead of chocolate. According to Autocrat Coffee and Syrup of Rhode Island, the drink became popular in the 1930s, when diner and drugstore operators sweetened leftover coffee grounds with milk and sugar.

Some foods were so designated because the state is a major producer — Georgia's official crop is the peanut, its fruit is the peach, and its vegetable is the Vidalia onion. It's no surprise that Idaho's official vegetable is the potato.

Other symbols were honored for their historical significance, such as North Carolina's Scuppernong grape, the first grape actively cultivated in the United States, according to State History Guide Resources. In 2002, Senate Bill 136 named the sugar beet Utah's official historic vegetable, as a nod to a once-thriving industry. The Utah Sugar Co.'s fac- tory in Lehi, built in 1891, was the country's first beet sugar factory built with American machinery, according to the Utah History Encyclopedia. By the 1980s, there were no beet sugar factories left in Utah. The same senate bill also named the Spanish sweet onion Utah's official vegetable.