Fretting over sources of our food fashionable
Sunday, August 9, 2009 3:15 AM
By JOE BLUNDO
Farmers' markets are popping up everywhere, locavore has entered the dictionary, and a movie about high-fructose corn syrup and cow manure is getting box-office buzz.
Another page might be turning in America's complicated relationship with food.
In less-wacky countries, I imagine, people just eat food. Here, we eat it, worship it and fear it, often all at the same time.
Hence, it's possible to go to the Drexel Theatre and watch Food Inc., a documentary about the horrors of Big Food, while consuming some of Big Food's tastiest products from the concession stand.
The movie, by the way, is being promoted by Chipotle, the fast-food company that was once partially owned by McDonald's, which gets hammered by the filmmakers for all the usual reasons. Oh, and Wal-Mart gets some praise, believe it or not.
So, yes, we're still in a sorting-out period in this trend toward less-industrialized food. Nevertheless, you can bet that something is going on, because I'm alert to it -- and I make it a policy to lag years behind trends. Read More
Just like Star Wars isn’t a documentary about our space program, Food Inc. isn’t a documentary about food production in this country. I’m not sure when some people began to think that Hollywood was a fair and accurate source of information, especially when it comes to agriculture, but they shouldn’t. The author of this article is dead on in one respect though, and that is the fact that it seems fashionable to panic about our food and talk bad about those who grow it. 80 years worth of consumer demands have brought us to this point in our food production abilities. They wanted food to be cheaper, abundant and more convenient and that’s exactly what we gave them. Food is no less healthy than it was before, there’s just more choices and not all of them should be considered a food staple. Good food choices, along with other things that affect your health are a personal responsibility that should be taken seriously.
1 comment:
Well if this is what people have asked for then they deserve what they get. IMO, many people are simply ignorant that the rule is GIGO, garbage in, garbage out, when the animals are fed whatever is cheapest, the quality eventually goes down. Twenty years ago, I read that fruits and veggies only contained 40 to 60% of the nutrients they had contained 50 to 100 years earlier. So I'm sure it's worse now. Kids are being taught in schools that farming is destroying the soil. Well as far as I know that has to be a result of using chemical fertilizers and other 'modern' farming practices. I know that chemical fertilizers tie up a lot of minerals in the soil making them unavailable to the soil. Also, chemical nitrogen burns up the humus in the soil and there are huge amounts piled up in feed lots not being used. What a waste. Farmers need to go back to the tried and true methods that have worked for millenia and not only will the soil be remineralized but the fruits and veggies will also be remineralized and then there will be less disease attacking the plants and the people. That is why the Hunza people are so long lived and disease free. Minerals need to replace drugs and chemicals.
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