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Food, Inc. reveals how our food system has been taken over by big business, leaving us with cheap processed foods stripped of nutrients and a farm system out of control. Find out why you may be a victim of a food system gone wrong and what you can do to switch from processed foods that damage your health to whole foods that boost your health.
While in line at the post office recently, I saw something that made me realize how skewed our food system is today...a child no more than two years old in a stroller was balancing a large bag of Cheetos and a large sippy cup of diet coke that barely fit in his tiny hands.
It was 10:00 am...was this his breakfast or his snack?
When I went to my Facebook friends to exclaim over what I saw in the post office, not all were as horrified as I. One mom said, “Well, it’s so hard to get kids to eat right today...and Diet Coke is delicious.”
If I’d ever doubted that our nutrition and therefore, our health, were in jeopardy, this was clear evidence of how pervasive processed foods are. We’ve become a nation enamored with the TASTE of our food, rather than the nutrition we feed our bodies.
Sometimes referred to as Frankenfoods, processed foods are the antagonist in the movie Food, Inc.
But more than an expose on the dangers of processed foods, Food, Inc. is a statement about how big business has hijacked the very foods that keep us healthy in the name of profits.
According to Food, Inc., “Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment” ...and it’s happening with our government’s consent.
In fact, the movie showed that many of the top players in government regulatory agencies, the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration), are actually former executives in companies like Monsanto.
Why is that a big deal?
Because these top government officials are making decisions about the direction of our food regulations. And companies like Monsanto seem to be benefiting in a big way. For those who don’t know Monsanto, they are a huge agricultural business and they are featured for some of their suspect practices that harm the American farmer.
Here are some highlights of what I learned from the movie Food, Inc.:
The way to fix this is to allow cows to graze on grass, their natural diet. If cows were allowed to eat grass for 5 days, they would shed 80% of the E. coli from their system. Instead, they are given antibiotics.
Unfortunately, antibiotics don’t always work and since the cows are in cramped conditions, they also absorb E. coli into their skin from sitting in their own feces. This is how humans get sick from eating meat and other foods contaminated by these farming conditions (manure for fertilizer, droppings from birds who swallow manure or fecal runoff from streams used for farm irrigation).
And there’s more...which is why I highly recommend that you see Food, Inc. if you care about your health and the health of your family.
So does this mean you have to run away, get off the grid and grow your own food? Not really. There is a message of hope here. And the message is that YOU, the consumer, have more power than you think. Your vote is in the dollars you spend.
To understand how powerful you are, consider the organic food industry. With double digit growth, organic foods are now becoming so profitable that more farmers and more stores are moving in that direction. It’s the consumer dollar that drives this response.
Food, Inc. offers some great suggestions and a message of hope for what you can do to change the way you eat AND the way our nation eats.
Here are Body Ecology’s Top 7 Tips for Changing Your Diet and Improving Your Health:
Food, Inc. was created by filmmaker Robert Kenner and features interviews with experts, like Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and forward thinking entrepreneurs, like Stonyfield Farms’ Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms’ Joe Salatin.
You can see Food, Inc. at a theater near you. Once you’ve seen it, you can rest assured that a healthy Body Ecology diet will help you make the best choices for yourself and your family.
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