A quick thanks to Nourished Kitchen for featuring me a few days ago.  What a lovely surprise!  She also reviewed 6 other great real food blogs, so take a look at her post and add the rest of those great blogs to your reading list.

I have a couple of recipes queued up to share with you, but I wanted to write a review of the movie Food, Inc. I saw it this weekend and was impressed.  The movie is about the industrialization of our food supply.  It is a topic I’m quite passionate about, and the topic that lead me to create this blog.  I thought the movie did a great job of summing up many of the reasons I have chosen to remove myself from the industrial food chain. I even learned some new things! Though it won’t affect my own eating habits (because I’m already off the industrial food chain), it has made me more steadfast in my beliefs, and it is an excellent tool to open the minds of people who may not be aware of all of these issues.

The movie presented the following theses:

• Factory farming is bad for the animals, bad for the environment, and ultimately bad for us as well.
• Foodborne illnesses have not gotten any easier to prevent in this industrialized system, and in fact, the industrialization and centralization of our food supply has made it even easier to contaminate.
• Some food processing plants treat workers poorly and often exploit the poorest people or immigrants (legal or not) with unsafe working conditions, low wages, etc.  The food they produce costs less at the grocery store as a result.
• We spend less on food than we used to, but at the same time  health care costs have ballooned.  Instead of spending so little on food (and eating the worst quality food – junk food laden with high fructose corn syrup and/or trans fats for example) and spending so much on heart medications, diabetes medications, etc, we should eat properly in the first place to make those medications unnecessary.
• A lot of corn and soy are GMO – Genetically Engineered Organisms.  They are built to withstand spraying of pesticides and herbicides.  Farmers cannot save seeds and are forever beholden to the seed corporation.  GMOs are generally bad.
• Farm subsidies currently benefit large monoculture farms (farms that produce one product, such as soy or corn).  This is why soy and corn are ingredients in almost everything, and why the unhealthiest food is frequently the cheapest.

I’m sure there are a few points I’m forgetting.  But there was hope at the end of this seemingly bleak tunnel.  One of them was in the form of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm – one of my personal heroes.  He described his farming methods that honor the animal;s biology.  Food produced this way is easier on the land, safer to eat, and healthier to boot.  He has a beautiful reason for respecting the animals biology that goes beyond the impact to the environment or nutritional value of the meat :

A society that views its plants and animals from that manipulative, egocentric, mechanistic mindset will soon come to view its citizens in the same way.  How we respect and honor the least of these is how we respect and honor the greatest of these.

The other was a case study of Stonyfield Farm, the yogurt company.  The (former) owner explained how consumers buying his yogurt propelled him to success.  The company was bought out by another multi-national yogurt company as a result.  Even the dairy buyer for Wal-Mart explained that if people demand a higher quality or different quality product, Wal-Mart will deliver.

All of the topics had excellent supporting material.  And in some cases, the audience was left to drawn their own conclusion.  For example, while large industrial slaughterhouses were shown, so was the slaughter of chickens on Polyface Farm.  Sure, there were gasps from the audience.  Killing an animal can’t be described as pleasant.  But it was done quickly and cleanly.  It was presented for anyone to make their own opinion.  Same with the piece on Stonyfield Farm.  Many people would say that it is just a part of the industrial food chain as Cheetos.  But it presented the organic industrial food chain in a way that let the audience decide of this was completely acceptable, just as bad as any non-organic major food corporation, or somewhere in the middle.

The movie left me feeling more empowered, more knowledgeable, and more passionate than ever before.  The movie is in limited release right now, but it will be made more broad as the month goes on.  Keep a watch out and see it when it comes out.  In the meantime, this passage from the companion book sums it up best.  This portion written by the aforementioned Joel Salatin:

Perhaps the most empowering concept in any paradigm-challenging movement is simply opting out.  The opt-out strategy can humble the mightiest forces because it declares to one and all, “You do not control me.”

Go plant a garden.  Join a CSA or visit your farmer’s market on a regular basis.  Read my blog (and many many more) for great recipes using real food.  Many even feature great real food on a budget.  Write to your local or federal government representatives to have them change the way we subsidize farms so that real food is more affordable.

If you want to read more about the film, I’ve linked to various interviews, reviews, and articles below.

• Official movie website
• Washington Post interview with the director
• NPR on Food, Inc
• The New York Times on Food, Inc.
• Serious Eats on Food, Inc.
• One of my favorite blogs, Food Renegade, discusses the film
• The blog Cheap Healthy Good reviews the movie – and their own eating habits
• Edible Aria with a link to an NPR radio interview with the director

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by the fabulous Cheeseslave.  Check out her post for links to many more posts about real food, including great recipes.