While I was perusing the documentaries on Netflix recently, I found a short one about the attempt to save an urban garden. It wasn't spectacular as far as documentaries go, but the events it concerned made me want to find out more. In doing a little research, I realized a longer documentary was done on the events - a film that was nominated in 2009 for an Academy Award for best documentary. So I ordered it from our library and checked it out.
The Garden is the story of an urban garden/farm that occupied 14 acres smack in the middle of South Central Los Angeles, an area that had been ravaged after the Rodney King riots in 1992. The farm had 350 plots, which provided food for families, most of which were low income. It was like an oasis of earth and growth surrounded by concrete and urban decay.
The documentary goes into the history and timeline in more depth, but basically the city of Los Angeles decided to sell the land that the farm occupied in a back room deal for drastically less than fair market value to the owner who had lost the land to eminent domain laws 15 years before. The farmers had been on the land because the city let them - they had no formal agreement. The owner decided he didn't want the farm on the land and tried to have them evicted.
A legal fight ensued. I won't tell you exactly what happened because the documentary tells it powerfully, but it wasn't good. It was another tale of the rich and powerful using the government like puppets to advance their own desires, regardless of the needs of the community.
It seems to me that governments should be doing anything they can to support groups who want to reclaim urban spaces that have been left to decay, particularly those that can be turned into gardens that feed people. I see a lot of rhetoric about low income families needing to "help themselves" - and this is a classic case of people who try to do just that and get thwarted by the roadblocks of power and money.
The Garden left me wondering how willing I'd be to chain myself to a fence and be arrested if someone was trying to bulldoze the way I provided for my family. How much would I fight? Do we listen to those who do, or do we assume they are just disturbing the peace? This is a great documentary, especially for people who are interested in issues of economic justice and community activism, as well as urban agriculture. Definitely worth a watch, even if it leaves you unsettled (which is kind of the point anyway, right?).
Have you ever had the experience of reading or watching something thinking it was current, and then realizing it's actually a lot older than you thought? And then it dawns on you how scary that is? That describes my experience watching Frankensteer, a documentary I didn't realize is 8 years old until after I watched it. Because the issues it raises are all still relevant today.
As far as the documentary itself, it was clearly on the low-budget side, without the polished feel of more widely released films. It's also not an American film - it's Canadian - so some of the information is geared toward Canadian governmental policies, though it does look at things from a "North American" perspective as well.
For me, the best part of the film was in its opening line - that in order to produce cheap food, we have taken a benign, naturally flatulent vegetarian and turned it into a cannibal and vampire. We push these creatures to within an inch of their life until ultimately they lose it in a slaughterhouse to end up on our plates.
The film makes its way through a discussion of the dangers of growth hormones and sub-therapeutic antibiotics, two things that in 2014 the public is demanding be removed from our food supply more than ever. In discussing the differences between government policies on these items and showing the disparity between what Europe feels is safe and what North American nations do, it occurs to me that it's amazing how we think that science and nature relate differently on this issue depending on your country's borders. I think it's safe to say that if it's not safe for a member of the European Union, it's not safe for me. Why that science cannot cross national boundaries is beyond me.
Frankensteer lays out all the basic reasons to avoid industrially raised beef, and in particular the health risk to humans of mad cow disease (not as much of an issue now as it was in 2006, but still nothing to dismiss) as well as E. coli and food borne illness. We shouldn't have to take a product home from the grocery store that's intended for consumption and have to treat it like toxic waste until cooked.
Frankensteer doesn't get into industrial agriculture's effect on the economy, environment or workers, but that's understandable for a film that's only 44 minutes long. Honestly, there are 500 page books on the subject that can't even cover it all. All the more reason to not eat or purchase it.
For me, I try not to eat meat at all when I don't know where it came from (as in, which farm). However, lately I've found it harder to make those choices when traveling, especially when I need protein and there are no vegetarian options that include any. While I didn't find this film incredibly compelling in and of itself, it served as a good reminder for why I don't eat industrial meat and a push to recommit to being strict about it in my own diet, even if it means making sacrifices.
Chipotle has been on the forefront of national restaurant chains in the movement toward more sustainable and humane agriculture practices. Their first foray into viral marketing was "Back to the Start," a video with Willie Nelson singing that emphasizes the importance of not continuing on the path of industrial animal production.
Next was "The Scarecrow," which I talked about here. This one pushes its indictment of Big Ag even further (and also suggests that burritos are a good choice). And now they've gone even further, with a four-part TV series available on Hulu Plus called Farmed & Dangerous. I waited until all four episodes were available to do my week free trial of Hulu Plus and watch.
The series is centered around a PR firm called the Industrial Food Image Bureau (IFIB, hee hee) which has as its primary client a Big Ag company called Animoil (a stand-in for Monsanto, obviously) which wants to market a new product called Petro Pellet, which is pure petroleum. In the first episode, they realize that Petro Pellet makes cows explode. A group called the Sustainable Family Farming Association gets a copy of the video of this happening and it goes viral.
The episodes that follow are about the relationship between the daughter of the head of IFIB, who also works there, Sophia, and the head of SFFA, Chip. Over time, Sophia comes to be sympathetic to Chip's cause, but not before a lot of chaos ensues. It hits on all the big issues - sustainability, pesticide and herbicide resistance, GMOs, government subsidies, lobbying and government corruption, Ag-Gag laws, CAFOs (which they call MegaFarm, the Death Star for Cows).
First, the good. I will always applaud Chipotle for trying as a large national chain to bring these issues into the forefront of the public's awareness and concern. They have at the very least opened up a lot of conversation. And Farmed & Dangerous in some spots is genuinely funny (particularly due to Buck, the head of IFIB).
While critics have suggested that the series really takes aim at farmers with a broad brush and paints them in a bad light, I actually didn't think the series was much about farmers at all. I think who it really skewered was PR firms and industry front-groups that blindly promote Big Ag to the point of absurdity.
In one particularly interesting segment, Chip is on a morning show and points out how alternate realities exist for Big Ag depending on what they want at a given moment. Sometimes Big Ag wants GMOs to be seen as unique, which is why they voraciously protect their patents. But they argue that when it comes to public health, GMOs aren't unique - they aren't any different than the regular corn. Which is why they oppose labeling on consumer products. In the case of the viral video (a stand-in for the types of CAFO whistleblower videos that Ag-Gag laws aim to curtail), they claim that the videos are fabricated or exaggerated, but then claim that they own the video because it was shot on their property. If it's false, why are you claiming it as your own?
So I think that exposing the crap that comes out of the PR firms and departments protecting industrial agriculture is something that's sorely needed. Front groups often have deceptively friendly names, which make consumers think they are advocating on behalf of us, when they are really advocating and lobbying for their big clients.
But. Here's my issue with Farmed & Dangerous. With this series, I feel like Chipotle is really starting to mislead by obscuring facts and using hyperbole and satire in a subject that already has a lot of misinformation and passion floating around. When Jon Stewart uses satire to bring communicate news, he typically brings it with a lot of video clips and facts that support his points. He may go over the top, but the message is there as well as the proof. This series doesn't do that.
For example, Chipotle wants to position itself as a sustainability advocate, and this film makes it seem like all farms that it sources its meat and other ingredients from are like Chip's farm - idyllic and full of pasture and sunlight. In reality, that's not the case. Chipotle sources a lot of meat and often substitutes conventional products when they run out of the "better" choices. If you were really committed to better practices, you'd just not sell the option that you couldn't properly source. But that would eat into their profits and would be unpredictable, and the customers want their chicken when they want it. I would be more compelled to believe they care about humane animal treatment if they stopped selling conventional products at all. There are animals who are not given hormones or antibiotics that are still raised in confinement operations and are not out frolicking in fields for most of their lives like Chip's cow friend.
I can see farmers' points of criticism that the series seems to pit big farms against small farms, making it seem like all big farms are evil and all small farms are virtuous. In reality, it's not really the size that determines the quality of practices. You can't lump in broad categories like that when it's really the underlying system of agriculture in this country that is flawed. It's not as easy as good guys and bad guys when you dig below the surface. What we need is less control over the food system by a select few corporations, not to be lecturing farmers on what they need to do.
And Chipotle needs to stop equating sustainability with small, family farms and throwing that word around. Not all small farms are "sustainable" - a word which is really hard to define. Not giving your cows hormones doesn't mean that your operation is sustainable. And not all family farms are small. Some mid-size and large farms have been in families for generations. Chipotle isn't knocking on the doors of tiny family farms in my area asking them to provide their tomatoes and peppers. Sustainability is a buzzword that you use to mislead unless you have facts to back up your practices. Using compostable plates isn't enough. And I don't even know that they do that.
In all, I didn't really think Farmed & Dangerous was effective satire. (They need to take a lesson from Jon Stewart on that one.) If they extended the series and added to it, I would be unlikely to watch. Chipotle needs to focus its efforts on making its business live up to its marketing, instead of marketing a business that doesn't actually exist in reality.
It's really easy in the world of sustainable agriculture and food advocacy to forget about water. Water is an even more basic human need than food - we can go longer without food than water. Only 1% of the earth's water is drinkable, and there are increasing concerns about access to clean water worldwide. (See last week's post about the UNICEF Tap Project.)
Tapped is a documentary that looks at how the bottled water industry affects our water supply and what we as consumers can do differently to help to preserve the integrity of our water supply. The film was made in 2007, so I'd venture to guess that some of the statistics have changed over the last 7 years, but much of what they discuss seems to still be true today.
While lakes and rivers are part of the public trust, groundwater often falls under state laws that grant "absolute domain" - which allows anyone with a permit to take and use the groundwater as they see fit. This has led in many states to the bottled water industry coming in, filing for a permit, and then pumping millions of gallons of water out of rural areas and into plastic bottles for resale. In effect, taking the resources of a community and then selling them for their own profit with no benefits back to the community whatsoever. The examples shown in the documentary were from Maine and Poland Springs, a subsidiary of Nestle, which is the largest bottled water company in the world. (Coke and Pepsi being next in line.)
These communities often have companies pumping groundwater out of their land in the midst of horrible droughts, where their own sources dry up and people are placed on water restrictions. Efforts to fight companies doing that have been fruitless. There are no laws restricting what these companies can do to water supplies - they just show up and take it. Governments don't want to fight these companies because they employee many people throughout the country, in not just the extraction process but the bottling process, etc. So they choose to avoid job consequences over environmental consequences and leave the community and the pubic hanging.
This film does a good job of not just blaming the companies, but blaming us as consumers for buying into the ridiculous marketing hype surrounding bottled water. So many ads claim that their water is pure or comes from mountain springs (ever notice how many mountain graphics or the name 'springs' are on bottled water labels?). None of the water comes from mountain springs and some companies have been forced to put words like 'public water source' on their bottles.
Because what you're getting in that bottle? It's tap water. Tap water that's basically less regulated and less tested for quality than what comes out of your home's tap through your municipality (if you don't have your own well). While municipalities have to test their water multiple times daily, bottled water companies do their own tests at will, and aren't required to do any of them. So when you see a label on a bottle of water that says "pure" - it's no more pure than tap water and not filtered.
Once it's packaged and sold back to consumers, bottled water is 1900 times more expensive than the same amount of tap water. And it creates an inordinate amount of waste, since we as a nation are not good recyclers. (At least in 2007 we weren't!) We think of plastic bottles as disposable - that's what makes them so convenient. But they end up in the ocean gyres of garbage or in landfills, leeching plastic chemicals. The film goes into details about the pollution issues of plastic bottles and how they threaten marine life and ecosystems, as well as how the manufacture of the plastic bottles in the first place affects the people who live near the refineries, with many medical issues. (The film also was created before the public decided it didn't want BPA in its plastic anymore, hence the plethora of BPA-free plastic products out there now.)
The film makes a pretty compelling argument for why if you're environmentally conscious at all, you should be drinking tap water out of reusable bottles. (They encourage buying a water filter system of some kind - whether it's on the tap or a pitcher, etc.) It also is beneficial for its explanation of what kind of water is actually in these bottles and how it's no different than tap - I'm not a fan of hype and health washing in marketing, so it's nice to have confirmed that the water coming out of my water filter at home is probably more pure than anything I could buy in a plastic bottle.
I realized while watching the film that I already made this switch awhile ago. I use a Camelbak bottle that I love at work and at home - and I take it with me on the go to people's houses and on vacations, etc. I have found many places that have water bottle fill stations that don't cost anything. So while I do buy bottled water from time to time, it's not nearly as frequent. I have no idea when the last time was that I bought a case of bottles. I'd like to keep it that way.
TED Talks: Chew on This is pretty much what the title indicates - a compilation of TED Talks about food. Never heard of TED or seen a TED Talk? According to their website:
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
I have seen TED Talks of different topics randomly online, about body image or technology or something like that. But I didn't realize that Netflix offers groups of TED Talks on different topics, and food is one of them. So I made my way through Chew on This. (If you don't have Netflix, you can watch all of these talks on You Tube or TED's website.)
I really enjoyed the format of these speeches. They were quick enough that you didn't feel like you were attending a long lecture, and the presenters were generally engaging in their delivery.
Jamie Oliver kicks it off with a mini lecture about school food. He even brings a wheelbarrow full of sugar out on to the stage to make a point about how much sugar kids consume. Other speakers touch on food in schools too, including Ann Cooper, a California lunch lady on a crusade. Mark Bittman of New York Times fame also has a lecture, on what's wrong with the way we eat, which you could expect.
Several lecturers talked on worldwide hunger and famine, including Josette Sheeran, who at the time, worked at the UN's World Food Programme. A few addressed the issue of feeding an ever-growing world population - and the viewpoints were diverse and not all anti-industrial agriculture.
Some were chefs, talking about specific issues like waste or finding ethical seafood options or even *gasp* ethical foie gras. A few speakers covered specific foods, like bread and the many transformations it undergoes from wheat to finished product.
But perhaps most surprising were the talks about food that didn't have to do with any other category, but were just plain interesting. Nathan Myhrvold, who worked on the tome Modernist Cuisine talked about the amazing photography and graphics used in that work, and he was so excited about the thing it was hard to not get sucked in. My favorite was actually Jennifer Lee's talk on the history of "Chinese" food in America, and how most of what we call Chinese food actually isn't. It also made me want takeout.
Being only 15 minutes in length, they don't take up much time. Even if you aren't interested in all of the topics, they are definitely worth checking out.
This week, Marty's Market hosted a screening of the documentary, The End of the Line. Marty's has recently partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium to sell seafood that is approved by Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch program, so this was a fitting educational program for them to host. They also are partners with the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium - the first store in the area to do so.
(As a side note - great place to watch a documentary. Comfortable tables, delicious coffee and nice people. Also a great place for brunch - I'm just sayin.)
I've known for awhile about the problem of declining seafood populations, having read Four Fish by Paul Greenberg.The End of the Line is based on a book of the same name by Charles Clover, and challenges the idea that we have operated under for centuries - that the sea is inexhaustible in its resources. (Come to think of it, we've pretty much thought that about land and underground resources as well.)
The film highlights the myriad of issues that overfishing creates - from environmental issues like drastically changed ecosystems. When a species higher on the food chain collapses, there is a proliferation of the lower species. When those are overfished, there's no way for the system to rebound. Bi-catch is also a big problem - the other sea life that is caught in trawlers and nets in addition to the intended population - making up 1/10 of what is caught. Bi-catch goes back over the side of the boat, dead. Bottom trawlers drag the ocean floor and destroy the life on the sea bed. None of it is so simple as putting a lure on a line on a fishing pole, which is the idea we have about fishing from the recreational fishing that people do as a hobby.
1.2 billion people depend on seafood as
a key part of their diet, and many hundred thousands of jobs are
dependent on it as well - everything from indigenous fishermen to
international corporations. Overfishing might sustain jobs now, but as the populations of the fished species dwindle, those jobs
will disappear anyway, since there will be no more fish left to catch.
This is where the logic behind quotas and protected areas comes into play - but these are often completely disregarded. Indigenous fishermen in developing nations are also threatened by their own countries selling the rights to off-shore fishing to developed nations. The coastal areas where theses people have fished for centuries are now depleted, making it harder and harder for them to make a living in their own home areas.
The film also touches on farmed fish - often thought of as the solution to dwindling wild populations. But the problem is that farmed fish EAT wild fish. So using aquaculture for a species that eats fish isn't actually sustainable in any way, since it takes many pounds of fish like anchovies, herring and mackerel to feed the farmed fish that seem to be such a great idea. There are also problems with these fish farms polluting and/or contaminating the wider ocean.
One of the ideas this film presents that I hadn't really considered before was how we look at seafood as a different type of life than other animals, like dogs, cats, zoo animals, or even livestock. If restaurants served panda on their menus, the public would be outraged. Endangered species! How can we eat them? But yet restaurants across the country highlight bluefin tuna, which is highly endangered. As a society, we classify the life of animals according to our own use. We wouldn't treat our dogs the way we treat cows and pigs. And we definitely wouldn't treat a panda or cheetah the way we do bluefin tuna.
So what do you do? The film suggested asking your legislators to "respect the science" - which I think is a great way of phrasing that governments can't let private interests try to refute established scientific evidence. Both the film and Monterey Bay also suggest asking businesses and restaurants - is your seafood sustainable? If they answer that they don't know or say that it isn't, ask them to look into the issue and leave them with a Seafood Watch card.
Also, if you're going to purchase seafood on your own, choose from the Best Choices list, and from the Good Alternatives list, if the Best Choices aren't available. Look for restaurants and businesses that prioritize sustainability and support those organizations. Download the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch app and check it out the next time you're in the market for seafood.
Every so often, a documentary gains some traction in the mainstream media and catches the public's attention. Blackfish is the most recent film to do that, backed by CNN and released to a wider audience. The story of Tilikum, a male orca whale which has been in captivity since 1983 and has been responsible for the death of several trainers, the documentary questions the ramifications of keeping orcas in captivity, and particularly using them for shows at amusement parks such as Sea World.
I didn't expect the film to really be one I would review for this site, but I wanted to watch it to see what all the hype was about. It was definitely worth my time, and for reasons beyond just the specific plight of the orcas.
Blackfish begins by explaining the circumstances that led to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) suing Sea World, claiming that training orca/killer whales in such close proximity is inherently dangerous. The suit was brought after the violent death of a trainer at Sea World Orlando, after Tilikum attacked her. It then goes on to explain the history of this particular whale, from it being taken as a baby away from its pod in the wild to its current place at Sea World.
His history is a sad one, full of seclusion and isolation. Orcas being highly social creatures, to be ripped away from his mother as a young calf and put with other whales not part of his pod, is difficult enough. Add on top of that years of being penned in small concrete tanks when you are used to swimming freely in the ocean, punished by having your food withheld when you didn't cooperate and do behaviors on cue.
Many critics of this film have talked about how zoos and wildlife in captivity are exploiting animals for profit. That's an entirely different argument and probably one worth thinking about. (Though this film does make clear a distinction between amusement parks and zoos, from the quality of their care to their purpose for existence.)
But more than anything, this film made me think about how we look at animals and their treatment in general. Much has been made of artists canceling performances at Sea World parks and people boycotting the parks in general, in protest of the way orcas are treated. But no matter how many videos are shown of the horrific treatment of animals in factory farms, people continue to purchase and consume animals who lived miserable lives full of suffering, in the farthest thing from their natural existence possible.
One particularly moving portion of the documentary details the first baby orca born in captivity at Sea World, and how she was removed from her mother to another park. When she was removed, the mother orca stayed in the spot where she was taken and shook, making agonizing vocalizations that experts say were meant to be long-range. She was calling out for her lost calf, which she would never see again. It seems awful, and it is. But this happens every time a calf is taken from its mother cow on factory farms, whether used for veal or sold off to another feedlot. There are documented cases of mother cows bellowing for their lost calves, standing in the spot they were last together, emotionally distraught. But we find this okay.
Perhaps it's because orca whales are honestly beautiful creatures, majestic in size and beyond graceful as they glide through the water. We also give them names and think of them with personalities. I recall my sister and I riding on a rubber, blown-up Shamu whale in our tiny kiddy pool growing up. We certainly don't glorify farm animals in such a way. Most people don't look at a cow in pasture as beautiful, let alone seeing that same animal standing knee deep in waste on an industrial feedlot.
Perhaps it's because it's much easier to simply boycott Sea World than it is to stop eating factory farmed meat. After all, there are many great places in this country to amuse ourselves or to learn about wildlife in general. And it's easier to bring out someone's inner activist when the price isn't very high and it doesn't require us to leave our comfort zones.
If you have the opportunity, watch Blackfish. It will make you think critically, which is the hallmark of a good documentary. And the actual cinematography is beautiful. But when you watch it, consider if the orcas are so much different at the end of the day than cows, chickens and pigs and whether or not they deserve the same kind of consideration and respect as Shamu.
It's amazing to think that something as tiny as a honeybee, which we routinely swat away from us, can carry the fate of billions of dollars of produce and the food supply of a nation on its shoulders. But honeybees are an essential part of our ecosystem and they are threatened by modern agriculture.
Vanishing of the Bees takes a look at the issue of colony collapse disorder (CCD). CCD is the term used to describe when a colony of bees disappears, leaving behind no dead bodies, but only the queen and a few young bees. No "official" scientific cause has been found for this phenomenon, though this film investigates the different possibilities.
I've written about bees briefly before, where I mentioned I have always been scared of bees. After watching this film, I'm more in awe of them than afraid. Did you know one single bee can hit up 100,000 flowers every day? That's some productivity. Bees are responsible for pollinating $15 billion in crops in the U.S. alone. I think we owe them our attention.
The documentary talks about the religious, historical and cultural significance of the honeybee and how for centuries, bees have been thought of as an indicator of environmental quality - the healthier the hive, the healthier the environment. If bees can't thrive, we can't either.
And right now? Bees are not thriving. CCD is affecting billions of bees and thousands upon thousands of hives with no exact known cause.
Some who are proponents of organic/holistic beekeeping believe that it's a byproduct of industrial/commercial production of bees. Practices like artificially inseminating queens to select for certain traits (thereby reducing genetic pool) and taking honey away from the hive and replacing it with sugar syrups are blamed for compromising the health of the colony, making it more susceptible to diseases and sickness. Makes sense - that's happened for other animal species due to our industrial farming practices, so it's not too far fetched to believe it could happen to bees.
When colonies in 37 states were affected by CCD in the mid 2000s, scientists started trying to understand the cause. Even theories about cell phone towers or Russian sabotage were floated. They found viruses and bacteria in many of the colonies that collapsed that can kill bees, but not in enough of the collapsed hives to determine that these diseases were the cause of the collapse.
More and more beekeepers and scientists started to look to our modern farming practices as the culprit. Our vast fields of monocultures are incredibly susceptible to pests, which explains the vast use of pesticides in our crops (you know, the same chemicals that were developed to kill people in WWII, which are now sprayed on our vegetables). But pesticides were put in use in agriculture years ago - and CCD is a more recent phenomenon. So how are they connected?
Older versions of pesticides were sprayed on crops, and bees could be removed from the fields during spraying time. The pesticides were on the surface, where insects would eat portions of the leaves and die from system failures - not necessarily in the flower/pollen portion of the plant that bees access. If you had an issue where bees were affected by these pesticides, you would know it from the dead bees present.
It was when systemic pesticides were introduced that bees started to be affected. Systemic pesticides are part of the plant's seed and express themselves in the growth of the plant through its life, including pollen and nectar, which makes bees susceptible. When these pesticides were introduced, the only testing done on them was whether or not a dose was lethal. One flower isn't enough to kill a bee, so they were deemed "safe" (or the risk was deemed "acceptable"), but no research was done on low level, sublethal doses - the kind that accumulate over time and are brought back to hives. These pesticides have been found in high levels in hives, but science has yet to prove that CCD is caused by them.
I find it highly problematic in this country that minimal testing needs to be done to prove something is an acceptable environmental risk, but conclusive testing must be done to be able to take it off the market after the fact. Our government throws caution to the wind and relies on the industry to do its own testing instead of doing independent, third-party testing. (Sound familiar?) Even watching European countries such as France ban these systemic pesticides and see bee populations recover somehow doesn't convince people in our country to take the same action. We're too concerned about the welfare of our corporations and our greed.
I don't want to give away everything about this documentary, because I highly recommend you watch it for yourself and evaluate the science presented. Also, note that it's not just the organic loving people that are raising the alarm about bees - industrial beekeepers and industrial farmers that rely on bees to pollinate their crops are speaking out too. If you eat ANY fresh food whatsoever, you need to care about the plight of the bees. What's happening to our honeybees is a sign that our current system is unsustainable (one of many signs, actually.)
The film also suggests some things you can do to take action for the bees - contacting your legislators is one way, but buying local, unadulterated U.S. honey, refraining from using chemicals on your lawn, eating organic produce that doesn't use systemic pesticides, growing a garden with a habitat for bees with lots of flowering plants - those are all important ways you can make a difference.
I can't recommend enough that you watch this film (I watched it on Netflix). Visit their website at www.vanishingbees.com and follow them on Twitter at @vanishingbees to keep up to date on the latest info about how you can help. For locals, check out Edible Allegheny's info on bees and CCD in western PA from their August/September issue.
Hungry for Change is a film made by the same people that made Food Matters, which I previously reviewed. Like the first one, I think this is a compelling documentary with a lot of salient points. Plus, I think it touches on a lot of great points about the diet industry - which is something a lot of food studies/clean eating resources forget about.
Diet and weight loss is an industry that brings in $60 billion a year. At the same time, 2/3 of all dieters regain more than they lose. So why do we keep pumping money into diet foods and weight loss programs when they clearly don't work, and we're sicker and more malnourished as a nation than ever before?
This film delves into the chemical processes in your body that make you crave and retain fat (and sugar and salt). Which goes to explain why when the "no-fat" crazy gripped the nation, tons of people didn't lose weight - they just started eating carbs like crazy and then got addicted to sugar. We become habituated to the effects of things like sugar and caffeine over time - which isn't surprising, because they are drugs. The film notes that more people die from food related chronic disease (like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes) than illegal drugs each year.
Hungry for Change spends a lot of time on the harm that we do ourselves when we make ourselves miserable dieting and don't give our body and minds what they need to be healthy. Dieting can trigger feelings of deprivation and desperation that aren't a part of a generally healthy lifestyle change. This film makes the compelling case that you're much better served by looking at your diet as a way to achieve health and balance and not as an enemy.
It did delve into JUICING IS AMAZING territory, as well as DETOXING IS AWESOME-ville, which induced my usual eye rolls. But if juicing gets people to stop eating Doritos and drinking Pepsi, I'm down.
All in all, this film was a good reminder of the most basic principles of healthy living - and that the benefits of eating clean are myriad, from whatever perspective you hold.
If the point of a documentary is to get people to critically think about an issue, Vegucated certainly met its goal for me, though it caused me to scribble furious notes and get riled up more than any other documentary I've watched so far.
Vegucated follows three people who agreed to go vegan for a period of 6 weeks, undergo a health screening before and after, and be educated about why someone should choose to be a vegan. Childish cinematography aside, I didn't want to hate this film. I felt like it meant well, but veered off into a lot of what I felt was misleading information.
First, my disclaimers. I think anyone should be able to pursue the diet of their choice. I respect vegetarians and vegans for their diet choices and see the myriad of benefits diets such as these provide, not only for animals and the environment, but for individual health. However, if the choice to live by those diets involves twisted logic (which is then used to attack what I'd call an ethical omnivore diet), that's where I have an issue.
When the three participants decided to go vegan for the purposes of the film and were beginning the transition, the filmmaker/narrator emphasized that they should look for vegan versions of their favorite products to ease the transition. This film was so full of processed foods, it made me ill. I'm not sure why someone would choose to give up dairy or eggs, only to constantly eat heavily processed foods with artificial additives and GMO soy. Processed foods have a huge impact on the environment and vegan versions of regular processed junk are not at all more healthy. To wave GMO soy milk and veggie/soy burgers packed with a list of 30 ingredients and claim that it's the epitome of health is misleading. If I saw one more person waving a container of Earth Balance around acting like it was health food, I was going to scream.
Along those same lines, the filmmaker points out all the wonderful restaurants where you can eat vegan - like Subway! and Johnny Rockets! My question is this - even if you eat a vegan option at Subway, you are supporting a corporation that does not support environmentally sustainable practices, and sources the meat it serves to other people from the worst of the factory farms they claim to not support. So it rings false to me when you claim veganism is good for the environment, but give your money to the exact corporations that destroy it.
There was a great deal of footage from factory farming operations in this film, which in some ways is great. I applaud any effort to get people to stop eating factory farmed meat. I've written about that before, as well as made clear my support for defeating Ag-Gag laws. If the only meat available were from factory farms, I'd never eat another bite for the rest of my life. Factory farms are atrocious and disgusting in the extreme and should not even be allowed to exist. However, the filmmaker/narrator doesn't just stop there with farms - she visits a "small, family farm" and claims it's just as bad as factory farms. No kidding. The "small, family farm" that she showed had a CONFINEMENT SYSTEM for its chickens.
The farms where we source our meat absolutely would never use a confinement system. I've been there and seen it - I don't have to go undercover with a camera because they openly welcome people to visit. While I think people can legitimately have ethical issues with eating animals, it is unfair to paint all meat eaters as people who allow animals to suffer. Not everyone who drinks milk sources the milk from a cow who had her calf ripped away from her at birth.
Another argument that doesn't hold up is that all animals raised for food contribute to environmental decline. It's true that factory farmed meat is terrible for the environment, and the majority of grain production in the country (as well as most of the antibiotics, incidentally) goes to raising these animals. Last time I checked, our farms allowed their cattle to graze on pasture, not grain shipped in from across the country. They also use their manure to fertilize fields, not trap it in a waste lagoon and then spray it everywhere, contaminating water supplies. They use rotational grazing methods that are sustainable. They don't destroy the earth - they nurture and protect it.
And this doesn't even touch the health portion of this film. Yes, in 6 weeks the three people each lost a few pounds and saw benefits in their blood pressure and cholesterol. And it's a fact that a plant-based or plant-heavy diet that's low in saturated fat and cholesterol is great for your health. But these people were not active and also continued to eat junk food - but it was vegan junk food, so it was "healthy" (ooh, Teddy Grahams are vegan!). These people are obviously not representative of all vegans, but to promote it as a healthy lifestyle while still encouraging people that they can eat processed cookies is wrong. "Vegan" doesn't equal health any more than "organic" equals health.
Ultimately, to paint all farms and meat eaters with such broad strokes is irresponsible. I know many vegans and/or vegetarians that eat a whole foods diet and don't rely on processed garbage as an "easy way out." But this film made me feel like I was on one side of a war, good (vegans) versus evil (everyone else). In actuality, I think an ethical omnivore has a lot more in common with a vegan than most people would assume - both are conscientious eaters, aware that what we eat involves much more than just mindless bites. So why can't we just get along?
Forks Over Knives surprised me, in that it's the same message that many other documentaries have covered, but it somehow felt different. The film makes the argument that a whole foods, plant-based diet is vital for long term health and well being. At the same time, a diet that includes animal products, such as meat, dairy and eggs, and highly processed, refined foods, contributes to long-term health issues.
We've heard that message a lot - it's one of the ideas that has made veganism so popular. And I think it's true that a diet heavy in plants, low in animal products and without processed foods can have dramatic impacts on your health. It has on mine.
But where this film differed from others, including Food Matters, is that it was focused on science and clinical studies. It seemed much more solid on clinical evidence and research. At the same time they interviewed many people who also had their own anecdotal evidence to contribute (including a champion MMA fighter who is a vegan athlete!). The narrator also decided to pursue a plant-based diet after getting some troubling blood work that showed that he was at high risk for heart disease. Just 13 weeks of a diet change completely reversed his risk factors.
This film was a good reminder that we have more power over our own health than we think. Perhaps my favorite line was when someone mentioned that if you think your health and wellness is based solely on your genes (and that you're doomed to taking pills because of them), you are a victim. Yes, you might have to take some pills for some conditions. But we don't have to be victims of the drug companies pushing blood pressure and blood sugar pills.
This is a good film to watch if you aren't really convinced that there's scientific evidence that supports clean eating or are still on the fence about its benefits. It's less hippie, more science. Which is right up my alley. You know, wanting to farm in space and all.
DIVE! actually came out in 2010, but as part of my quest to watch as many food and environment documentaries as I can, I added it to my queue. The film focuses on waste - in particular what America throws out. The dive to which the title refers? Straight into a dumpster.
In just the first few seconds of the film, we're reminded that America wastes 3,000 pounds of food per second. So in the time it has taken you to read this far, we've wasted several thousand pounds of food.
It's true that 40% of the food that's wasted is thrown out in our households. But what about the other 60%? The film follows people who actually dumpster dive for discarded food from grocery stores.
I was shocked to see how much food they would find on a nightly basis that was perfectly edible. Entire bags of avocados or packages of tomatoes, where one had gone soft or moldy, but the rest were fine. Slightly wrinkled blueberries or bags of salad greens that were one day away from "expiring." Even more shocking was the amount of meat wasted. In the span of seven evenings, the people in the film found enough meat to feed a family for a year. Being outside in the cold night? It stayed refrigerated and sealed. And in the garbage.
The people who do this see it as civil disobedience - actively opposing the immorality of perfectly good food thrown out by corporations when millions of Americans go to bed hungry each night. I see it that way too. Because of the Good Samaritan Act passed during Clinton's presidency, companies are protected from liability for food donations. But many still throw out food in advance of expiration dates. And refuse to donate it, even when asked.
Regardless of the morality factor, it's not even good business practice. We waste 50% of the food produced in this country, to the detriment of our environment, economy and our societal well being. One person in the film is quoted as saying "when you waste food, you waste life." Every time you throw food out, you're not just wasting that food, but all of the resources that went into producing it - water, time, labor, etc.
This film reminds us that we've forgotten that food is precious. It's a valuable gift. We take it for granted and consume it divorced from its true cost. Say you throw out leftovers. What if you also dumped 1,000 gallons of water down the drain at the same time, and then put $5 on your kitchen counter and set it on fire? Would you be more likely to eat, share or preserve that food if you were aware of what you were truly wasting?
While this film felt like a "first documentary" from the filmmaker, with a lot of footage that seemed like it was recorded on someone's iPhone and a lot of "I tried to get someone from X store to speak with me and they refused," it still kept my attention. It also made me interested in reclamation programs that work with companies to salvage discarded food before it's lost to rot or spoilage and help get it where it needs to go to feed people. Even though I probably won't be dumpster diving anytime soon, I will probably ask my grocery store what they do with the food they throw out when I visit this week.
As a geek that loves documentaries, I recently added a bunch of food/environment/science related films to my Netflix/Amazon Prime queues (one of my favorite benefits of streaming vs. cable!). After reading a lot about it on Twitter, I started with Food Matters.
This film focuses around the basic idea that you are what you eat. Garbage in, garbage out – that kind of thing. From the outset, I felt like the filmography was relatively rough – almost manic, with distracting backgrounds and too many vintage clips of instructional films from the 1950s and 1960s.
However, I agreed wholeheartedly with the premise – that this country suffers from an epidemic of chronic malnutrition (as opposed to acute malnutrition or starvation). Far too often in my own experience, I’ve gone to the doctor with an issue and was just given pills and pushed out the door. When I had constant headaches in grad school, the first doctor I saw just wanted to give me pills, even when he knew I was crazy-addicted to caffeine.
The film makes the claim that modern medicine too often treats symptoms and not the underlying disease or condition. Much of what currently ails us as a population can be attributed to our lifestyle – poor diet, lack of exercise and stress. Makes sense. It’s made sense in my own life. I agree with the film’s assertion that the human body has an astonishing capacity to heal itself from many ailments, if given the chance.
Food Matters does a good job of reminding consumers that just like Big Agriculture, Big Pharmaceutical is a half a trillion dollar industry. There is a lot of money involved in treating illness with medicine in this country. Every time you take a blood pressure pill or a blood sugar pill, you are putting money in the hands of drug companies that have a vested interest in you never actually getting off their medication. They make no money from wellness. For the vast majority of the population, it’s affordable and safe to change your diet and start exercising. So why would you want to just stay on the pills when they won’t prolong your life or more importantly, improve your quality of life?
As is the case in Big Agriculture, supporting research for drugs is often sponsored and paid for by the drug companies themselves. Drug companies don’t want to pay for research that suggests that a plant-based diet and an abundance of vitamins and minerals can lead to health. The film also talked about high dosage vitamin therapies that have been studied for years as treatment for various chronic illnesses, including serious illnesses like cancer.
While much of what the film discusses makes perfect sense – that nutrition should be our primary prevention strategy against disease, etc. - it also veers off into more alternative therapies that left me interested, but highly skeptical. For instance, there’s a lot of information on colonic therapies that “cleanse” the body of toxins. As I explained in my post about why I don’t do juice cleanses or lemon juice/maple syrup/vinegar cleanses, a healthy colon doesn’t need help cleansing your body. Don’t put toxins in your body and you won’t have to force them out uncomfortably by drinking 2 liters of water after you get out of bed and having nothing but high fiber juice for days.
The film highlights the Gerson Institute, which champions a holistic therapy for cancer and chronic, degenerative diseases. The therapy, according to their website, includes activating “the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself through an organic, vegetarian diet, raw juices, coffee enemas and natural supplements.” They claim a great success rate and honestly, I’m not doubting them. Anyone who has ever seen someone suffer from cancer knows that chemotherapy is awful in every possible sense. And anyone who wants to treat their cancer with vitamins and enemas should absolutely have the right to do so. (It’s ridiculous that all of the Gerson clinics have to be out of the country even though they are staffed by MDs that go to the same med schools that other doctors in the U.S. attend.)
But I’m still skeptical that raw juices and enemas are cure-alls. Sometimes disease happens, regardless of the health of your lifestyle. For instance, eating raw foods isn’t going to make my lungs stop being asthmatic. I have a decrease in asthma symptoms because of my increased lung health due to cardiovascular exercise, but I don’t stop having the disease. I also don’t want to go back to my life before being on thyroid replacement hormone – even though my lifestyle has also contributed to a reduction in symptoms.
Overall the film had interesting food for thought, if you’ll pardon the pun. And it serves as a great reminder that the diseases plaguing the west – particularly heart disease and diabetes – can be not only prevented but REVERSED by true lifestyle modifications. I would not put it in the same class of documentaries as Food, Inc. or A Place at the Table, but it wasn’t a waste of an hour.
I actually saw A Place at the Table about a month ago, thanks to Amazon Prime allowing me to rent it while it was in theaters. I've been stewing on it since, wondering whether or not to write about the issue of hunger. After all, I live in a two-income household where we are most decidedly NOT food insecure, and I also grew up in a family where I never went one day hungry. I've always been grateful for that, at least on a surface level. But I've never felt that gratitude so profoundly as I did when I saw this film.
Here's the synopsis, from the film's website:
Fifty million people in the U.S.—one in four children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine the issue of hunger in America through the lens of three people struggling with food insecurity: Barbie, a single Philadelphia mother who grew up in poverty and is trying to provide a better life for her two kids; Rosie, a Colorado fifth-grader who often has to depend on friends and neighbors to feed her and has trouble concentrating in school; and Tremonica, a Mississippi second-grader whose asthma and health issues are exacerbated by the largely empty calories her hardworking mother can afford.
You read that correctly. 25% of American children are food insecure, meaning that they don't know where their next meal is coming from. 1 in 6 Americans don't have enough to eat. Among countries with advanced economies, America ranks worst for food insecurity among its citizens. 1 in 2 American children will receive supplemental food assistance during their lifetimes. Half. More than 23 million Americans live in food deserts, where the availability of fresh, healthy food is severely limited if it exists at all and a grocery store with the amenities most of us take for granted is a car ride away.
This documentary was powerful, not just because of the facts and statistics it presented about how bad the problem actually is, but because it made you look into the faces of hungry people. It forced you to confront the grim realities that families across America confront every day - how do you put your son to bed at night when he asks for more food and you have no money and nothing in your cupboards and you've already exhausted your allotted food pantry distribution? What do you do when you know your daughter isn't doing well in school because she's so hungry she can't concentrate? How do you get a nation of simultaneously obese and hungry people? How is this happening in America, of all places?
For the first time in history, we have a hunger problem in our country that is not due to a shortage of food. America produces more food than we could ever possibly consume, and as we know, much of it is wasted. But we have spent trillions of dollars on food subsidies for corporations and not individuals; we spend more money bailing out banks than we do our own working poor. We give government subsidies for unhealthy calories - as the price of fresh, healthy food rises, the cost of packaged, corn based junk goes lower and lower. If you need calories to survive, you can get the most caloric bang for your buck on the fast food dollar menu. Why are we surprised when this type of diet takes its toll?
This film highlights some great work food banks are doing. In my area, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank does amazing work. Mark and I are even planning on growing an extra raised bed of food this summer for its produce donations. But food banks can't provide for every need, and they have to function with what they are given. Donations that come from grocery stores are often processed, shelf-stable foods. We can't feed America on charity alone. We need real, bipartisan legislative protections for food assistance and school lunches. Hunger doesn't have any regard for party politics and it doesn't discriminate. Many of us who are food secure now could just as easily not be, given the right combination of circumstances.
Which brings me to the biggest lesson I learned from this film. A reminder, more than a lesson. I think that one of the legacies American society inherited from its forefathers was the attitude that if you just work hard enough, you'll be fine. Self-sufficiency has been our motto for centuries, to the point where people hear the words welfare and food stamps and equate that with laziness and fraud. Any system that we try to run as humans will have its share of fraud and people that manage to take advantage of the system. But there are people who work more hours a week than I do, in harder circumstances, that still need welfare to feed their kids. And they aren't sitting at home watching cable drinking booze and collecting the government's money. I worked at a grocery store in graduate school, and the people that came through with EBT cards weren't flaunting their good fortune for everyone to see, that's for damn sure.
This film reminds you that people just like you are going to go to bed tonight with an ache in their stomachs because they didn't eat today so their kids could. Or they ate today, but have no idea whether they will tomorrow. If it was your child asking you for food because he was so hungry he couldn't sleep, wouldn't you hope that someone had stood up for you in the halls of Congress and in the White House to give you a stronger safety net? Food is fundamental and we need to treat it as such.
We cannot hope as a country to accomplish real social change until we feed our people. Food and water and shelter are among the most basic of needs, and in a country with overflowing wealth, it's a travesty that we allow the basic needs of our citizens to go unanswered. How can we expect to develop the leaders of tomorrow when malnutrition stunts children's ability to learn and grow? Which future scientist or world leader is going to bed without a full belly tonight?
Challenge yourself and watch A Place at the Table. Find out what you can do to take a stand against hunger here. Consider also donating to your local food bank to help meet immediate needs, especially if that food bank takes fresh food donations. When you are drowning in zucchini and tomatoes in a few months, stop and be grateful for the bounty with which you are blessed and share.
Starting with a food bank garden bed and letters to my legislators, I'm making a commitment to myself to revisit this issue again until I'm satisfied that I'm doing my part to give everyone a place at the table. Will you?
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