|
Eat, Drink, Think, Change |
New York Times writer KIm Severson reviews "Food Inc.", pondering the burgeoning gap between food films of today and yesterday. In decades of the past, food movies were intended to make audiences hungry, chock-full of footage of lavish, sumptuous meals. The last few years have seen an influx of food movies-"Super Size Me", "Fast Food Nation", and most recently, "Food, Inc.". But these are of a different generation, more focused on making our brains rumble rather than our stomachs.
"By the time Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” came out in 1994, moviegoers had come to expect food films filled with glistening dumplings, magical dessert and technically perfect kitchen scenes.
But that was then, before Wal-Mart started selling organic food and Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Before E. coli was a constant in the food supply, before politicians tried to tax soda and before anyone gave much thought to the living conditions of chickens."
"'Food, Inc.' is part of a new generation of food films that drip with politics, not sauces. It’s eat-your-peas cinema that could make viewers not want to eat anything at all."
Link here for full article:
|
|
|
California's Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country's Food Supply |
Scott Thill analyzes the apocalyptic views of environmentalists on California's extravagant and unsustainable use of water-and whether or not we should be worried.
"Like other geographies once sustained by an uninterrupted supply of
water, California is going dry. And when it dries up, so does its
cities, its people and its future. Simply put, global warming,
human-induced and otherwise, has significantly broadened the range
of the tropical belt by a rate of 70 kilometers per decade. Southern
California, like the Sahara Desert and Sahel savanna, is already
subtropical in the summer. But with climate crisis expanding its reach,
that subtropical heat could claim not just Northern California's
snowpack, but even part of Washington's and Utah's bounties."
"The way California is currently wasting water -- on elaborate lawns in
Beverly Hills, on cow death-camps in the San Joaquin Valley, on
whatever -- it either doesn't know where its water comes from or simply
doesn't care."
LInk here for full article:
|
|
"Edible San Francisco" contributor Wayne Garcia educates us on how to source local seafood-the most commonly ignored food genre in the sustainable movement.
"...just as the notion of “locavore” eating has taken our collective
definitions of “seasonal” and “sustainable” to new levels for produce,
meat, and poultry, the same mind-set can, and no doubt needs, to be
applied to seafood. Or to look at it from a more hedonistic point of
view: Just like the first time we experienced the extraordinary aroma
and flavor of a peak-season, dry-farmed Early Girl tomato or roasted a
truly free-range, organically raised hen, our recent adventures with
cooking fish bought directly off the boat has forever changed the way
we purchase and eat seafood. And once you’ve crossed that threshold,
there is no turning back."
Link here for full article:
|
|
|
How Industrial Animal Farming is Contributing to the Risk of a Swine Flu Epidemic |
Nicolette Hahn Niman-writer, lawyer, and rancher-addresses the connection between industrial animal farming and the swine flu epidemic.
"Last Thursday the World Health Organization declared the first flu
pandemic in 41 years, after swine flu (H1N1) was found in 74 countries,
infecting nearly 29,000 people so far. Even with the use of modern
antiviral drugs where they are available, such a pandemic could kill
over 100 million people. The WHO statement said nothing about this
epidemic's underlying causes. They are undeniably complex. But what is
clear is that the danger of such pandemics has been exacerbated by the
industrialization of animal farming."
"...this pandemic reminds us that the current method of raising farm
animals is fraught with risks to human health. In 1998, a virus that
combined human, swine, and bird flus was discovered in pigs at
industrial operations in North Carolina. It rapidly morphed as it moved
from pig to pig and from herd to herd. Within months, the hybrid virus
was showing up in hog operations throughout the United States. By early
1999, blood samples of pigs from 23 states showed that 20.5 percent had
been exposed, according to Dr. Michael Greger, author of the book Bird Flu.
"It is from this pool of viruses," Greger writes, "that the current
swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material." Dr.
Robert Webster, a leading flu expert and a director of the WHO
Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals
and Birds, says that this "triple reassortment virus" is the likely
precursor to the swine flu that is now sweeping the globe."
LInk here for full article:
|
|
|
Food Inc - Piercing the Veil of Corporate Agriculture |
Civil Eats blogger David Murphy reviews upcoming film Food Inc.
"If you’ve ever been curious exactly how America produces the
cheapest and “safest” food on the planet, but not quite believed all
the hype that fuels the empty advertising slogans on your television,
then Food, Inc. promises to be the film that explains why there’s a
serious disconnect between food propaganda and reality."
"For those unsure what exactly is wrong with that reality, the
rest of the film succinctly explains the high cost that the cheapest
food system in the world has had in wrecking havoc on human health, the
nutritional quality of food, the livelihoods of family farmers, the
safety of farm workers, rural communities and the environment."
Link here for full article:
|
|
|
