Vote with Your Fork

This evening Mad Dog and I sat down to watch a DVD we got last week from Netflix. Honestly I wasn't sure about watching it, knowing the subject matter. It was one of the most horrifying and sad films I have watched in a very long time. It was a documentary by Robert Kenner called Food, Inc. (producer Eric Schlosser author of Fast Food Nation) Am I being over dramatic? In someways maybe I am being, but what I watched tonight only reinforced everything I'm trying to do by going Local.

The film attempts to lift the veil of the industrial food industry. Take a moment to think about your local supermarket. There are some 47,000 products in the average supermarket, but the secret is that those products only come from a handful of producers. Through acquisitions the major players in the food industry has become fat from those companies we think are small independent, safer and even organic companies (Organics is the fastest growing food segment, increase 20% annually). This small group of corporations have a complete hold on the food industry, while still creating the illusion that the food we eat and feed our family still comes form those iconic images of the American farm.

Our food is grown fatter and faster to suit the needs of an industry. White meat and chicken breasts are preferred, so animals are rearranged to suit the needs of the customer. There for we get the Pamela Andersons of chicken from the industrial producers of chicken. Cows are feed corn based feed, which they are not biologically designed to digest - why? Because Corn in cheap (30% of the land in the U.S. is used for planting corn) and it bulks up cows faster. The result are new stains of E. coli bacteria which sickens approximatively 73,000  Americans a year. That's just wrong! Isn't it? If it is why are we doing it? The high increase in processed foods derived from corn has created an America facing an epidemic level of diabetes in adults (1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will contract early onset diabetes) and an alarming increase of obesity in our children. Our nation's children are the first generation who are not expected to live as long as their parents. Who needs terrorists when we have our own ignorance, arrogance and self to blame for killing America.

To watch Food, Inc. you see big industry (food industry that is) they way they should be seen. Not only are they abusing our environment, but  the animals, vegetables, the workers, the farmers and our bodies with their lack of standards and concerns for the cash that flows when we shop at the supermarket. I recommend watching the documentary. I am hoping to pick up the book. Mad Dog is pretty sure this will push me over the edge to never eat anything I don't know the origin of. I don't think that is completely possible, but I does make me look at things differently. Like the fast food commercial that came on just after we shut off the DVD on TV. That burger didn't look good to me, it looked like the ammonia cleaned filler mixed with 1 to 100 cows.

One last thought...something that I loved from Food, Inc. - Each of us still has the ability to vote on this issue every day - at breakfast, lunch and dinner.