Saturday, November 14, 2009

Food Inc.



I have never been a fan of documentaries but Food Inc. is a very interesting and informative source that will provide you with important insight of the food industry and will have you leaving a changed person.

If you look at the supermarket shelves featuring the cheap dollar food, you soon realize that they are not the healthy kind. Most of the shelf products can be traced to corns which has huge and aggressively lobbied government subsidies allowing it to be sold under the price of production. This in turn leads to the transformation of farms into factories of mass-produced, corn-fed cattle. As cattles are herbivorous, changing their diet causes their biological system to adapt and mutate, creating sicknesses and diseases which are then spread on to the consumers and the plants which their manure fertilizes. However, people are are reluctant to revert back to the natural order which would cut away all the processing steps but not be production-efficient, as a result, the solution was to add another cleansing process such as meat-filing with ammonia.

Then there are the exploitation of cheap labor with degrading and inhumane conditions. It is also enraging that the government targets these illegal immigrants instead of the big companies employing them. In a nutshell, while the businesses are cutting costs, environmental costs and health costs are shifted effectively to the public. So while mega-corporates are making their billions, billions of people are suffering as a result.

The Virginia farmer Joel Salatin, a focal point of Pollan's book, speaks with earthy pride for healthful, locally grown food. He gazes at livestock grazing on his land and marvels at the grass that feeds them and the manure that fertilizes it. How much more efficient can you get than nature itself?

A working-class Latino family, the Orozcos, who can afford only the same fast foods and junk foods that have weakened the truck-driver father, a diabetic, and have set one of his two daughters on the road to obesity. Whatever they save at the drive-through gets eaten up in medical bills.

So maybe it is time to reevaluate our priorities. Maybe it is time we pay attention to what we are encouraging by virtue of what we eat and do. Highly recommended - A+, 5 stars.

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