Getting “Fresh”

Hey Folks!

I just watched “Fresh” a film about, what else? Food.  It’s a film done in the States by Ana Sofia Joanes, and it’s worth a watch. It only runs about an hour and ten minutes, so make yourself a cup of tea or some popcorn, curl up for an hour and enjoy.  As an added bonus, you can watch it for free this week (Jan. 26th through Feb.1st) by clicking here!!

Whenever I watch a food documentary I feel two things: One is a little nagging voice that tells me that I have read about or watched something on most of this before, the other is a HUGE feeling of inspiration.

Watching farmers do their thing in a natural and sustainable way makes me want to get a little dirty (in the soil sense, though I will admit to having developed a strictly foodie crush on Michael Pollan).

Watching the packed feedlots and chicken houses makes me never want to support that kind of system or eat those poor animals again (I’m not going veggie – I just want to eat happier, healthier meat).

Watching people like the inner city farmer from Chicago (Will Allen I think his name was) makes me think that yes, in fact, I can make a difference. It may be a teeny tiny difference, but if I make a change, maybe I will inspire some of you out there to do the same, and slowly, ever so slowly things might make a turn for the better.

Please watch this one while you can and let me know your thoughts and ideas!

I’ll even make it easy for you and save you some scrolling time by putting the link here as well!

“Jimmy’s GM Food Fight”

Want an interesting documentary on GM foods, that really seems to show a little of both sides? I found one!

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/jimmys-gm-food-fight/

Jimmy Doherty is a farmer in the UK, who uses natural and classic farming techniques. He raises free range meat (from what I gather mostly pigs though), and has a degree in entomology (bugs).

When I saw that this is who was doing a documentary on GM foods, I thought that he would most definitely be against, and I was surprised at how open he was to the whole GM thing – especially living in the UK where GM foods are pretty much banned, and protestors have been known to strip down entire fields of GM crops to prevent spreading and even research. He visited farmers in the states (believe it or not, the Amish), who use GM crops and are all for it, and farmers in the UK who are completely against it. He also goes to Uganda to visit banana farmers who could use some of the benefits of GMO, and a GM lab where GM versions of the bananas are being created (and surprisingly stolen by locals to plant). Back in the UK he visits a lab, where they are trying to develop a strain of barley resistant to drought, and where another scientist has grown tomatoes that also contain the nutrients found in the pigments of berries (specifically blackberries and black currants – they actually look kind of yummy), so that people who do not eat enough berry fruits can still get the nutrients from food, not pill.

Jimmy raises the point that farmers have been modifying plants for thousands of years through seed selection and such (he shows what we have done to cabbage). Is it that much of a difference to go directly into the gene?  For some reason, the berry-crossed tomatoes don’t seem like a bad idea to me. They would help more people get the nutrients they need. The barley also doesn’t seem so bad. If barley could resist drought, it would ensure that people had food, even when times were bad (weather wise at least). Is this messing with nature though? The claim is made that by creating a plant resistant to a certain pest or herbicide, farmers will have to spray their crops less. This would mean less pollutants and chemicals in/on our food, and would be much better for the environment. It could even (though I doubt it) drive down the cost of food, as farmers wouldn’t have to buy all of those chemicals.  That doesn’t seem all that bad either.

The idea of GM foods still frightens me a little because there really is no way to know the health effects of it all until it is maybe too late and it seems that not a whole lot of research has been put into what GM crops do to ecosystems. If you develop a plant to resist a bug that eats it, what is that bug going to eat? Then, if numbers of the bug starve and die out because of cross contamination and not being able to find the plant they eat, what does the bird that used to eat the bug eat? Agreed that most such bugs are considered pests, but I’m sure that they are still part of a food chain. Flies bug me, but spiders eat them, and spiders are all right by me.

Then there is the whole idea of ownership. Look at Monsanto. It’s a company who has developed GM versions of soy and canola, and is now tormenting farmers because Monsanto’s plants have cross contaminated with other farmer’s crops and now Monsanto wants money. Many farmers have lost everything because of Monsanto. Some have tried to fight back, and lost. I’m not too fond of that: the idea that a big company (like Monsanto) can own a plant variety, sue the innocent organic farmer who’s crops they have ruined because their seed had blown onto his farm and destroyed his crop. If embracing GM crops means embracing the rights of giant companies to crush small farmers or force them to grow their product, I’m not down.

Seems to me that the whole idea of GM foods is one giant tangled mess of DNA and big business. I feel like I don’t mind the idea of it when plants are spliced / modified with other plants. The idea of putting fish or animal genes into plant foods is creepy though (Little Shop of Horrors anyone?). I like the idea that GM crops could help save food sources and farmers in places like Africa, where food is scarce and hard to grow, but don’t like that fact that in Canada and the US GM crops are seeming to be used as more of a corporate weapon than a benefit to the people who grow and eat the food. Plus we still don’t really know the consequences.

What are your thoughts? For, Against, or so turned around you don’t know what to think anymore?

“Food Matters”

I have been feeling a bit under the weather, and if you know the weather in Vancouver right now, you know what that might entail. I am one of those people who very rarely gets sick, and when I do I am out of the game for a day or two. It sucks, and as a result, I can get a little bit sucky too (I called my Mom tonight and asked if she would come to Vancouver to make me a grilled cheese…).

The bright side is that between naps, hazy shift at work, shots of oil of oregano and vitamin D (thanks!), hot baths and hot tea, I can catch up on some reading.

Today I read “Food Matters” by Mark Bitterman.

It was a nice, easy read, and as the recipes take up the bulk of the book, was only 120 pages. I think that this was originally on my documentary list (have to double-check that), but the book was available when I was at the library, so I picked it up. I enjoyed it. I felt like it was a shortened, easier to read version of “In Defense of Food” by my new-found role model Michael Pollan, but with less facts, references to studies and eye-opening facts.

Mark Bitterman somehow makes the whole thing feel easier, as he based his book on his own foodstyle change. He also emphasises the need to reduce meat intake as a way of controlling environment, as well as health (Interesting fact from Page 1: “global livestock production is responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gases – more than transportation”). Mark takes the “cheat” approach – he eats strictly from dawn till dusk, then lets himself eat freely at dinner. I have not given myself the same luxury (or at least will not be as of Sunday.. boom boom boom), and will be knowing the ingredients of all of my food, all of the time. On the flip side of that, my only rule is that I have to know my ingredients. While I am choosing not to eat chemically engineered food products, I can still have a steak for breakfast if I so choose it, or white bread, as long as I can tell you what is in it (flour, water, oil, yeast, salt and sugar when I bake it :P).

Flipping through the recipe section I am reminded that I really must learn what I’m supposed to do with lentils, and that I need to eat more of them. I also see a bit of soy product, which I kind of cringe at. I will have to write about soy one day, and why I think it should not be a huge part of daily life. In either case, finding meat alternatives is not a bad idea. I plan to eat meat and fish more consciously (happy cow, not mad or sad cow) in the next year, and with my budget this will in turn mean better quality, and most likely a lot less quantity.

Basically, I felt like Michael Pollan’s advice “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” was reiterated (not that it should have to be, but reminders are always good). I am still curious to see the documentary though, and what they did with it.

If you see “Food Matters”, pick it up, and give it a read. It’s short, it’s easy, and it’s inspiring.

A Lazy Evening

Maybe it’s because I couldn’t fall asleep until late last night, maybe it’s because I was up early for work, maybe it’s because I spent an hour staring at a computer screen at the library going over 250 book/movie titles under the search word “Food”, or, maybe it’s because I caved today and ate at A&W (it was kind of gross, but when I went to Mom’s Grilled Cheese truck they were out of cheddar, I was hungry, and onion rings sounded good… Hey! It’s not January yet), but when I got home, I realized that tonight was giong to be a lazy night.

I popped in “The Real Dirt on Famer John” which I picked up at the library today and curled up with a blanket on my couch.

It was alright, though I have to admit, not what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting it to focus more on farming (Farmer John is an organic farmer in the states who runs a HUGE CSA program for Chicago), but it was mostly on his life, as influenced by the farm. He’s an interesting guy. In the first scene of the film he eats his soil.. and not more than two minutes later he’s driving his tractor in a feather boa. I didn’t feel like I really learned anything that would help me or inspire me with the whole “Eat” thing though, besides giving me a tiny urge to get my hands dirty.

Then I watched “King Corn” about two guys who realized that people are pretty much made of corn (they had hair samples taken and it was found that the carbon in their hair was from corn). They moved to Greene, Iowa, rented an acre of land and grew corn on it. They didn’t do a lot of research into what kind of corn they were planting, and pretty much followed what all of the other farmers in the area did – fertilizing with an ammonia based product and planting genetically modified corn designed to resist a specific pesticide/herbacid and take up as little space as possible while it grows. Later on they decide to follow the paths that their corn may take (high fructose corn syrup and feed lots) and the effects that it could have. They even made their own high fructose corn syrup at home! It was a good watch, and had some interesting points on agrictulture in the U.S.

So, it was a lazy evening, but I did get two items crossed off of my list of things to watch/read. Now I need to peel myself off the couch and eat something… anything but corn.