Food Inc. – A Must See Film

Foodies, Readers and Cheap food eaters; I come to bury our current food system not to praise it!

Sorry Shakespeare – but I had to change those famous lines of yours.

So – what are you eating these days?

Did you know that your child could die from contaminated ground beef?  See here for a recent news article.

Or better yet do you know what contaminants have been found in your favorite fast food burgers?  Did you know that it’s possible to find cow poop in your burgers along with a tasteful dose of ammonia?

I hope you are freaking out, Lord knows I was when I first learned of this about 8 years ago.  Who knew that one day we would be eating food treated with toxic ammonia.  Does anyone think this is insane????  For more on ammonia in your burgers read this recent NY Times article A must read if you don’t eat Organic meats, if you buy fast food and or have children in public schools.

The reality portrayed in this film is one of many reasons why my family and I enjoy a mainly organic diet. If and when we consume animal products, we only purchase grass-fed, pastured and organic. And we always choose pesticide free produce as best as possible. A great guide to use that will help you determine the pesticide content in produce is the EWG Dirty Dozen Publication. Each year they publish the 12 most contaminated produce items that must be purchased organic and a list of 15 produce items that have little to no pesticide residue and can be purchased conventional.

Now, getting back to the title of this blog post; Food Inc. is a movie I highly recommend you watching.  You can get it by visiting your locally library to check out a copy or rent it from Amazon’s Video on Demand at a cheap $2.99.

Below is what the movie’s website has to say about the film:

“In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.”

To view a trailer of the movie click here here

Not only is this film portraying actual happenings in the food industry it informs the public on the potential hazards that certain foods can cause to our health.  I highly recommend this video for adults and children.  Both my children under 9 years old have sat through the entire movie several times since its release date in 2009. They were amazed at all they learned and had tons of questions for me afterwards.
This film should be recommend viewing for all people both young and old.
If you really want to make an impact you can always go to the Food Inc. website and download materials that will help you host discussions and raise awareness.

To eat or not to eat that is the question…

Because your health matters!