Try Not to Starve After Watching Food Inc.
Ammonia-soaked beef “product,” patents on “life” and 46,000 food products all coming from three main manufacturers are some of the snippets of info you’ll find in Food Inc.–the traceable food movement’s latest effort to educate the population on society’s nutritional woes.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgHqPTjAzYQ&hl=en&fs=1&]
The film hits me close to home considering my hometown of Salisbury, MD–also home to Perdue Chickens is featured in the film, though they declined comment. Unlike an uncouth PETA documentary, there are few shocking images trying to turn people away from carnivorous diets altogether but instead a focus on what created the monster factory farms in the first place–money.
Corn is the lifeblood of our modern, industrialized food industry and the film very thoroughly links farm subsidies in corn to the decrease in meat prices for consumers (but at what real cost?), saturation of corn-derivative products and even the increase in Mexican immigration when subsidized U.S. corn and NAFTA precipitated the unemployment of 1 million (yes million) once-employed in Mexico corn farmers. Meanwhile so many Americans are wondering why they don’t just find jobs in Mexico. They then had footage of a meat-packing company, who notoriously hires the immigrants in the U.S., instigating INS raids on their worker housing to deport unneeded, undocumented workers instead of offering due-diligence through layoffs.
Killing the appetite further is the legal aspect of the food system, from the protection of companies over the consumers, as seen in the denial of Kevin’s law (not me), to the veto of California’s GMO labeling act–shot down by Governor Schwarzenegger (shame on you Arnold). Putting a face to the names of these bastards, they listed several FDA and governmental decision-makers all making a direct transition to and from executive slots in the global food conglomerates. It’s nice to see the governmental regulators are watching out for our best interests.
Sowing the greatest seeds of wisdom in the film are by far the actual farmers, who thoroughly understand the nature of the proverbial shaft they’re being subjected to through the law of economic scales. One of the film’s traditional and organic farmers beautifully encapsulates our food system by saying that we have become a nation of technicians constantly asking “how” we are to achieve the next objective, but never considering “why” that may or may not be a good idea in the first place.
Being only 93 minutes, it doesn’t have the depth of each individual topic as King Corn does for corn production or In Defense of Food can for dietary revolutionaries, but it’s a palatable start and will hopefully act as a wake up call for the populace–people may even make the obvious connection that eating garbage will turn us into exactly that.
If you want to change to an unadulterated, nutrient-rich diet I suggest exploring realmilk.com and the Weston A. Price Foundation. Be warned the rabbit hole of information goes deep, but it just might save your life.
PS – Another thing the movie stated is that I could probably be sued for saying that factory-farmed food isn’t good for you. Bring it on : )