Food, Inc.

I liked this dvd because it didn't gross me out about food, instead I found it helpful and educational so now I can make better food choices for my family. Everyone must watch!

Have you ever received a diagnosis of hypertension or high cholesterol? If this happens you begin to wonder about the food we eat. The film, "Food, Inc." makes you sit up straight in your chair and wonder what we have in our stomachs. Nutrition is very important to us as an alternative to pharmacotherapy. This film allows a person to question of how food is produced and that the FDA is still open for business. Suppose that the film is actually enough, you can ask questions about food production in the United States. Is anyone worried about security of the food we eat and why the fox guarding the henhouse in the national regulatory agencies and how long I am able to start growing food in the yard?
It is time for anyone concerned about the quality of what we eat vote by choosing quality over quantity in the supermarket, and an attempt to decent food affordable for families. We must wake up to the alarming methods

I am a PROCESSED-FOODS CONVERT, thanks to this amazing documentary, and subsequently others similar to it in nature.

Before, I mindlessly went about my daily life, buying processed foods and easy take-out for too many years, being a busy working mom with two kids in two activities at a time. Hey, they wouldn't put anything to compromise our health in those boxes. Yeah....right....

Since about April of this year, I've been researching & learning about natural foods, enzymes and how incredibly valuable they are for us all, and most shockingly, what's happening to our food supply right under our very noses as we go about our busy lives, assuming everything is just fine.

There is so much MSG & HFCS (High fructose corn syrup) in the majority of processed foods, which so many of us are eating AND feeding our children, not to mention the genetic modification of the very seeds we need to sustain life, which this film documents and explains very, very well.

Companies are patenting and modifying the very DNA of the plants we eat and feed our livestock & poultry. Let that sink in for a moment. One of those also makes a very potent & popular weed killer. Hmmmm....food supply owners AND poison factory? The same company? Hmmmmmm...

If you educate yourself by buying growth-hormone free, antibiotic free, non-genetically modified 100% ORGANIC vegetable, dairy and meat products, you VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS & the producers will get the message. The first documentary I watched on the subject was Food, Inc., and is a real eye-opener. This led to the viewing and further investigation of others. The more I uncovered, the more upset I became, but then I empowered myself again, as I am in charge of what I put into my body!

I also got the KitchenAid Professional 5 Plus 5-Quart Stand Mixer, in Black, at the same time, to make this new lifestyle choice less a chore & more doable. It's the best kitchen appliance I've ever owned, and makes cooking from scratch easy, peasy! Clean up is also a snap. This all came together for me because of this movie, and Michael Pollan's "Food Rules".

The Fannie Farmer cookbook, recommended to me 15 years ago by my sister-in-law as a must-have, truly is a must-have! You will not be sorry, and even the pickiest of eaters will not be able to get enough.

***IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THOSE WANTING TO LOSE WEIGHT:

It has been my experience that eating REAL food without added fillers, preservatives & other chemical alteration FILLS YOU UP much faster than the processed stuff. MUCH! You'll have a lot of food left over when you cook and eat this way - the way we were meant to, so stock up on some freezer containers or a vacuum sealer. I got both.

Doctors & alternative health practitioners stress that we should eat natural sugars, not artificial sweeteners. Eat actual, natural foods from this Earth, without all the added nonsense, and you'll naturally eat less. Plus, your body knows what to do with real sugar & how to process & eliminate it.

I loved this movie so much! It has motivated me to become an organic raw vegan. It's definetly an eye-opener. If you have common sense you will watch this movie.

I have been a vegetarian for almost all of my adult life and a vegan for the last few years. I started out for ethical reasons, but even if I stopped caring tomorrow I would still eschew animal products. The way they are produced is just too scary. I've been reading about these issues for over twenty years, so there was little that surprised me. For me, the value of the film was showing the human costs, both direct and indirect, in our food system.

Let's back up- this film and many others like it would have you believe that McDonalds, Walmart and Tyson invented the model for the farm, restaurant and supermarket as factory. They didn't. We've been mechanizing our food systems to the best of our ability since we started trading in and consuming sugar. The scary part now is that we can do it so much more "efficiently" than we could before because our technology has improved so much.

The hell of sugar was the way it not only depended on slaves but literally destroyed them. Slavery has been outlawed, but the conditions under which laborers in the food industry work are little better than what the slaves labored in. One of the farmers makes the point that "Big Food" previously depended on African American men to, literally, do their dirty work. Now it's undocumented workers. One of the prices our country pays for cheap food.

The story about the little boy who died after eating contaminated hamburgers- and then the inability of the corporation to apologize- drew both tears and indignant gasps. And well it should. Even worse, what people can say about food companies- Food, Inc- is heavily restricted. When someone can sew Oprah Winfrey for speaking out against a food company, no one is safe. And that's a shame.

It was the story about the small family trying to balance the costs of food and health care that showed what the true cost of our food system really is. Other organizations have cited that we spend the same 26% of our incomes on healthcare and food combined as we did forty years ago. The difference is that we used to spend 18% on food and 8% on healthcare; now it's reversed. Actually, the biggest difference is that we used to have a better quality of life when we did.

It's a powerful film, especially for children, especially for meat eaters (although the message is emphatically not that everyone has to become a vegetarian). But... it's not the comprehensive indictment of the food system I thought it would be. They focus on one quirky, independent farmer as part of the solution. What about more about CSAs? What about how to make all of that work in a city? (It felt like this, as well as many other films on the subject, was talking to someone in the suburbs.) And while I understood what they were saying about Walmart being potentially part of the solution, there's A LOT more to that story, such as how vulnerable businesses become when 40 to 60% of their business becomes dependent on Walmart- and keeping them happy.

This is a very good work and it should be required viewing in school. It's just not the final, most comprehensive resource.