Food Inc

What inspires me to post? Life seems more normal to me now, even though I am still doing exciting and different things. More on that later. But something else that came my way that I wanted to share was the film Food, Inc. I'm sure many of you have heard of it; it came out over the summer.

It's crucial to be fully educated about our food system because it touches so many important areas of our lives and our community: health (obesity, diabetes, eating habits), safety (e coli and diseases born out of some horrid industrial food systems), worker's rights and immigration (providing opportunities that are humane and viable), policy (the usual story of the big businesses that control our government and government prioritizing those needs over all the vital needs I am listing here), animal cruelty, sustainable development (what jobs are we providing in this food system? and often overlooked, what jobs or tasks are we taking away? ie, small farms, seed saving, etc), environmental impact (livestock is one of the top few contributers to greenhouse gas emissions).

Need I go on? I highly encourage everyone to see this film, and would even go as far as to consider it a matter of personal responsbility. With a movie like this, you can't use ignorance as an excuse as these issues keep growing. For some it will be about being introducted to broad ideas, for others, more about learning new supporting details or even just being reminded.

Their website also lists some take-aways. The most important reminder for me is about meat. Not only eating less meat (the quantities most of us consume is not natural, and because of environment costs), but also avoiding convential meat (tyson, purdue, etc) because of the unsustainable way they do business (environmentally, socially, health-wise). It's easy enough to get meat from farmers markets, farm shares and CSAs, or ordering directly from farms.

Take it in!