Bringing Food back to the US

I've requests from friends and family to bring goodies back to the US when I come visit for Christmas. The question is, what's allowed and what's not allowed by US customs? And what do you tick under the box that asks about food?

I've never had a problem and have brought in mostly tea bags and biscuits and candy previously. The first time I ticked "NO" to the food box, and the customs officer made a scene with me. "Tea is food." Um, ok, then yes, I do have food. The next time I ticked "YES" (I really do want to do the right thing) and the officer said, that means fresh food, only tick that if you have fresh food, you shouldn't have ticked it. Biscuits and candy and tea bags are fine, he said. 

So this time I have a request for squash, and I thought I'd also bring over a nice Panettone cake for Christmas morning. But I don't want to do it if there's a chance they'd sieze it. Last year I got a lovely panettone at Selfridges and it was amazing... but expensive. So I'd rather not waste it!

What do you think?

I just brought candy back into the US and ticked no to the food question.  When going through customs I specifically said to the customs agent that I didn't know what to tick.  He didn't really seem to care and said something like "that's okay" and I went on my way.

I always thought this meant produce type stuff...
I will be bringing back candy and mac n cheese. Not sure I will tick the box lol

I ticked the box for candy, chocolate and stuff like that- they just asked me what kind of food I had, I told them, and they sent me on my merry way.  The customs form makes a big deal out of the fact that you must declare food etc etc so I thought it was better to err on the side of caution (ie, if you have a mean customs officer you could probably get into trouble for not ticking the food box if you've got chocolate/candies, but you can't get in trouble for declaring that you have some kind of food even if it wasn't strictly necessary!)

I think pannetone should be fine - one year I brought chestnuts and they were fine with it!  Like the others have said, just declare it and ignore the snarky officials.  Better to be thought nitpicky than to be thought to be defrauding the USDA.

sounds good to me!

Speaking from personal experience, anything with beef or chicken jerky or none can't be brought into the states.
Candy and non-perishable goods are okay.
Fruits and plants are nonos.

A little anecdote:
My co worker and I were coming back to the states.  He had beef flavored instant noodles of some sort and I had 20 boxes of candy for souvenirs.  I declared I had 20 boxes of candy and he declared he had nothing.  We were both searched and all of his noodles had to be toss away because it contained beef.  They actually had some guy who could read Korean, Thai and whatnot read the food ingredient labels.  Since he didn't declare he had food, he was fined 300 dollars.  This probably won't happen to everyone, but it's always a risk.  We came in through Seattle customs.