Saturday, March 6, 2010

Food Inc.

I put off seeing this documentary for a long time because I knew it would be difficult to watch. 

It is now cheaper for people to buy entire meals at McDonald's or any fast food restaurant than it is to buy vegetables or fruits.  No wonder insurance companies are making billions of dollars - we are an unhealthy country, eating a lot of junk.  And the reason for this is that large conglomerates like Tyson, Purdue, Monsanto and Smithson control almost the entire food industry.  It is impossible for many people to buy free range chickens or meat that has been grass fed, rather than fed with corn, because the prices are too high.  The conditions in slaughterhouses for humans and the animals are disgusting and infuriating and our government isn't doing nearly enough to change that.  (Because our government is made up of people who worked in those industries.)  People are dying daily from contaminated foods - children are dying daily - how can we stand by and do nothing?

It is our responsibility as consumers to change this.  We can do it by buying locally at Farmers' Markets, buying organic and grass fed, free range chickens and meats, having a garden if you can, demanding organic foods be sold in grocery stores, stop buying so much junk food and altering the way we eat.  I didn't say it would be easy. 

I don't know how we, as a nation, can really alter the course that we've taken for over fifty years - but I do know that pretty much anything is possible. Even Walmart is providing its customers with organic foods now - so there are positive signs that change is coming. Please rent Food Inc. if you haven't seen it.  It is so worth watching. 

1 comment:

Richard Black said...

It's even worse than we think. I met a guy in North Carolina who was a mechanic in a chicken processing plant. He told me that the legal description of a "free range chicken" is a chicken whose cage has a door at the end that allows the chicken to go out into a 20' by 20' yard for a 2 hour period daily. He told me that most of the chickens in their crowded cage never even noticed that the door was open - after all, their feed was inside.