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Food, Inc

December 5, 2010

I have been wanting to see this documentary since it came out and I finally watched it tonight. I always try and look at any controversial topic with a balanced view.  Sometimes documentaries and frankly anyone with a particular perspective,  can give a very myopic viewpoint. Any data can be manipulated enough to prove your hypothesis.

However, I thought this movie was really well done. And from the results that I have seen by combating alot of what they are talking about in this film, I believe it hits pretty close to the mark. If you wanted a movie to help motivate you to change your food habits, this will help!

I would wager that most of us wonder where does my food come from? What kind of food quality is really in a 99cent double cheeseburger! As they said in the film, a consumer can feel helpless. We eat what the major food corporations produce. It is unavoidable. So why fight it? I have dealt with this for years. Okay, I am going to eat healthy. One walk down the aisle and I am thinking, well what am I going to eat? None of this is good for me. But it is possible folks, but you need to put in some effort and make a commitment.

I particularly liked the pieces on e-coli and diabetes. It’s hard to watch and hear at times, but we need to stop being ignorant to the facts. They said 1 in 3 Amercians born after 2000 will contract early onset diabetes. 1 in 2 in minorities! We talk about the fact that we can’t afford healthier food, but then we pay for it in the backend with higher medical costs, prescriptions, and poor health. So is it really cheaper?

The film spends quite a bit of time using Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Soybean seed as an example of how dominant these companies have and how any farmer does not conform gets crushed by lawsuits. This part really got my blood boiling at points.

But the film leaves us with hope and not all doom and gloom. We vote everyday with the meals we eat and the food we buy. Ultimately, we can change the system and in many cases already are. Some suggestions from the film after the last scene:

– Buy foods that are grown locally (an average meal travels 1500 miles from farm to supermarket!)

– Shop at Farmer’s Markets

– Buy Foods that are Organic

– Choose foods that are in season

– Know what is in your food

– Read Labels

– Cook a meal with your family and eat together

To learn more, they have a website at takepart.com/foodinc. On a final note, you can click HERE to see  filmmaker Robert Kenner and Michael Pollan on CBS Online explaining the film to John Dickerson. (Unfortunately, embedding is disabled.)

4 Responses to “Food, Inc”

  1. […] been trying to reduce my intake of meat. So when I do have some, I buy really good meat that is vegetable-fed, no GMOs, locally grown, […]

  2. […] theater near me, but I am very intrigued to see this movie. As you probably know from my reviews of Food Inc, Killer at Large, and my 3-part series on what the great folks at Nourish Life are doing, the topic […]

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