Did you know that in Nova Scotia, farmers get 80 cents per food dollar spent when selling directly to customers, like at the farmers’ market, compared to 9 cents when selling to retailers? (The Coast, July 15 2010)
food
Food, Inc. (full documentary)
If you eat food and you have never seen this documentary, you should.
Even if you’re vegan, this film is of relevance to you for many reasons, including the Monsanto conspiracy to dominate the world soybean market.
The film may be about America’s food industry, but a lot of it isn’t different around the western world, and a lot of it goes around the entire world because the US food exports pretty substantial amounts of food each year. Besides, those that control America’s food system don’t stop at the borders. Greed and crime have no borders.
If the video is a bit slow to load, please pause for 2-5 minutes while you do something else, then come back and viewing should be fine unless something is wrong with the source site.
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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.
Aside from all the insights I’ve gained on the topics of the documentaries I have presented on this site in the past couple of weeks, I have to say I’ve also gained a lot of insight into how people manipulate others in an organizational way. I’ve heard about bribing, having friends in high places, and such, but seeing it in action is something else. The Monsanto manipulation is the perfect example in this film. It’s disgusting enough people do it on their own, but when they find and collaborate, it’s a whole new level of crime as far as I’m concerned, somewhat similar to manslaughter (accidental or in the moment) and murder (premeditated).
It’s really tragic our justice system doesn’t have any punishment that is suitable for the crimes these people are doing.
The Food Miles Myth – Eat Local for the Economy, Not the Environment
Food miles is a nice concept for awareness, but a meaningless and impractical ideal to believe in for eating local. Eat local for the economy, not the environment. It doesn’t sound as “romantic”, to idealize something for money rather than for the Earth. However, you’re likely idealizing something you wouldn’t be able to prove to be true.
Earth Day Pledge Update #2 – My Farmers’ Market Experience
For Earth Day 2010, I made a pledge to eat better.
I then defined “better” with four specific goals.
This is an update on goal #1, which was to spend more money on groceries at the farmers’ markets than in the grocery and other stores. That’s without having to go to extremes of not eating what I want or paying unreasonable prices for similar products in the grocery stores.
South Park, Doodle Friends and Other Facebook Tagging Memes
I saw these tagging meme graphics on Facebook, but they weren’t in the best formats for Facebook so I improved them in various ways to share. I did not contribute to the text, though, so if you were offended, please don’t blame me. The first set is a bunch of South Park characters, with appropriately offensive labels in some instances.
The second is Doodle Friends characters, from where I do not know other than that they are part of a Facebook application.
The final one are just some personalities attached to a drawing style I do not know.
Here’s how you can get any of these memes to use:
- Click on the poster you want below to get it at full size.
- Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
- Upload it to your Facebook profile.
- Tag your friends (or let them tag themselves).
Please click here for a complete list of over 100 Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.
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- Doodle Friends
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- Onion Heads
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- South Park II
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- South Park
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