I am traveling in California at the moment to visit my husband’s family and give my little ones time to get to know their aunts, uncles and cousins. I am having a bit of trouble uploading pictures today, so a super cool blog post on our travels will have to wait until tomorrow.
For today, I wanted to tell you all about a new documentary that is coming out that I so wish everyone in the world would watch. The documentary is called Food Inc., and it is a startling revelation about the corruption in America’s food industry. Normally I try very hard to only keep posts on this blog positive, but I just think that this is something that we all need to talk about.
The video for this blog is not able to be embedded, but you can find the trailer on You Tube here
As a mother of two children with food allergies and chronic illnesses, and someone who suffers from them herself, my obsession with educating my family on the nature of the food that we consume, and the way that it directly effects our health has become a bit of an obsession. I have read such books as Fast Food Nation, The End of Food and Food Inc. I have found countless articles and research on the ways in which genetic food modification has been one factor in chronic illnesses like Celiac disease and diabetes. I have tried to put the pieces together to be as proactive as possible on helping my family consume the foods that will create health, rather then disease. I know that there is a link to the deterioration of human health, and the food standards that are exploited everyday.
Now, I know that documentaries are biased, and they try to use scary words to get the viewer to pay attention. I can’t say whether there are factual errors, or incorrect assumptions in this documentary, but what I can say is that even if only 50% of what they have to say is true, that is still enough to warrant outrage at what is being done to our food supply.
We are all paying the price for modified and contaminated food. Even if you or your loved ones are not sick or suffering from allergies, we are paying for the rise in chronic illness as a global society through rises in health care costs.
I have a niece who suffers from Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease, and whose life right now is dominated by hospitalizations and insulin pumps. She is 8. I am sure that there are multiple factors that led to her illness, but I have to believe that one of them is the food she consumes.
The contents of our food are kept secret, we are not informed about what the effects of certain foods can do to our bodies, and we have almost no standards for what words like “organic” or “natural” can encompass.
The documentary is powerful, and since I know that so many of you that stop by this blog either suffer from, take care of someone, or just simply know someone suffering from a food allergy or chronic illness, I hope that it sheds at least a little light on what is going on in our country.
I would love to know what you all think, of the issue, of the documentary, and of anything else that moves you.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm so glad you are talking about this! Our food is SO critical…even that sounds like a drastic understatement…but we all know so very little about where our food comes from, what it really contains, whose making a profit, who can't make a living by growing it, etc.
Along with the books you've listed, some other great resources are Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral"; Michael Pollen's books "the Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food", Sally Fallon's cookbook "Nourishing Traditions" and Cynthia Lair's book "Feeding the Whole Family".
We owe it to ourselves and our families to be educated consumers and NOT allow the food industry to use humans as guinea pigs for their own profit.
Thanks for talking about it!
I just read about Food Inc. in our local paper, which is highlighting food in its articles this summer. They mentioned that the film may be shown here in town in the fall and I'm hoping hoping it will! I agree with Marie's recommendation of "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" — also, one of my favorite cookbook writers, Jae Steele, is coming out with a vegan + local cookbook very soon. Thank you for bringing up this issue here!
Food Inc, recently played in a local theater here and my husband and I went to see it. We have been trying to eat locally, seasonally and organically for a while now and Food Inc. confirmed that we were moving in the right direction. One exciting thing that is going on in our neighborhood is a community garden. You can check it out here: http://nashvegi.wordpress.com/
Food Inc. is a great documentary. Although I agree with you that there are parts that are a bit biased. It is frightening that our food is processed by the lowest bidder, on the cheapest equipment. The FDA has just been completely reduced to a worthless organization, and now we are all paying the price for the rise in auto immune illnesses.
I agree with Marie that we don't know where our food comes from, what is put into it, and how it is packaged and sold. That is part of the essential education that will help each of us to stand up and take back our food.
i just went to the city last weekend to see this since it wouldn't be coming out where i live.
i was happy to see how much and how many different aspects they packed into it.
i had heard it was heavy handed, but i was quite pleased that there were probably about 100 people in our viewing. so if you add that up and if each one of them makes a small shift…..
least of which i was happy to leave and know i would be visiting our two local farmers for our meats, veg and dairy. if i hadn't have been before i would definitely be now!
i am so interested in reading about what you suggested. i see that another reader also commented about the book "in defense of food", which had also been recently recommended to me.
my son has down syndrome, and thankfully he does not have celiac disease (people w/ DS have a slight higher incidence of celiac), but we had an awful time his first 5 years of life. i don't think people realized how sensitive/immature infants GI tracts are, and we are feeding them too much junk early.
good nutrition is imperative in our household, because of my son's DS predisposing him to weight issues later in life (he also has hypothyroid as do all the women on my mom's side of the family, and diabetes is prevelant).
out west, diabetes has become an epidemic, and i hope to see the day when healthy foods are more affordable for the masses, and a box of mac and cheese is the expensive item.
some how, we have nutrition backwards here!
ps – have a wonderful time on your trip
I guess I am late to comment. I always try to keep it short. I have read a lot on the subject and took classes in college on agriculture. There is no doubt that we are far removed from our food sources and that large corporations are not the right people to being making decisions about them. But, in this fast pased world of ours, we give up and let them?
As a side note, I took an agriculture class field trip for three days up and down the central valley of CA. We stopped on the side of the road to look at a feed lot. A square mile of cows, standing in their poop, being fed corn to fatten them up. Which by the way, they are not meant to eat. They slaughter them just before they bloat up and die. As we were there on the road, a person from the feed lot said that we needed to leave.
I am looking forward to seeing the film. I think all documentaries are biased. However, I have seen an interview with the director and he seems like a very level headed guy.
Heather I love your blog and I have been reading back through the archives when I came across this post.
I agree with you completely that food is essential to health and that it is so important to pay attention to diet and the implications of food choices, particularly where our children are concerned.
I nursed my babies well past their third year, avoided processed food, HFCS, white sugar, white flour, preservatives. I varied the grains in our diet, limited cows milk and soy products, made almost everything from scratch, canned my own foods – organic, local and seasonal as much as possible. My kids eat a wide variety of foods, good proteins, far more than the RDA of fruits and vegetables and yet my daughter still developed Type 1 diabetes at the age of 6.
It's believed that Type 1 can be triggered by environmental factors, stress or a virus like chicken pox. It may be caused by a lack of Vitamin D – not helped by our overuse of sunscreen, or overexposure to certain proteins in those who carry the genetic link. There is a possibility it is caused by vaccines or because our immune systems are underchallenged in our overly sanitized environment and yet overtaxed by everything from pollution to chemicals. In our experience, we don't vax, use natural cleaning products, homeschool our kids allowing us to ensure they get plenty of fresh air and exercise, see an excellent naturopath who guides us in the use of supplements and balancing natural health products with a good diet. We still ended up with a T1 diagnosis for our daughter.
The thing is that we don't know enough about how the body works and interacts with its environment and while it might be comforting to think that our food choices alone could protect our children from this, the fact of the matter is that food choices are unlikely to be a significant contributing factor in contracting Type 1 diabetes. If your niece has it, and your sons have food allergies or other potential markers for autoimmune disorders, I urge you to stay vigilant, and keep making good choices, but also be aware that T1 diabetes isn't something that we can control with our choices.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Alena
http://ovarianpain.net