So, I moved this week, and don't have internet set up at the new place yet, so haven't had a chance to blog (or do much else for that matter) yet.
So, I watched the documentary Food Inc. around the time I started this challenge. It was really...disturbing? Is that the right word? All I can really say is that is really changed the way I think about my food. It covers a lot of issues related to the way food is produced today, including food-borne illness, genetic engineering, factory farming, diabetes/obesity, etc. It was interesting to learn that the way food is grown and produced right now, so much of that food is going to the fast food industry, so they tend to really drive how things are done - mass production, fast, and cheap. I found little things in this movie to really blow me away - such as how chickens have been engineered now to grow much faster and have much larger breasts - since people like the breast meat - and they are so top-heavy because of it, they can barely stand up. Or how cattle are grain fed, but their guts don't digest the grain as well, and this may be responsible for some of the issues with food-borne illness, among other things. I found the issues with the genetically-modified seed to be extremely interesting, particularly from a legal stand-point: since the companies that own that make this seed own the patent on it, the farmers are not allowed to collect seed from the field to plant the next year. This not only affects the farmers who plant this seed, but also their neighbors, as the wind often carries it.
The big take-away from this movie is that if you don't like it, do something about it. And most of the changes are things you can do on an individual level, as a consumer. Many of the recommendations they make in this film are many of the things I have been doing lately: buying organic, buying local/from farmers markets, not drinking pop, eating at home. I've really enjoyed buying from the farmers market, I love the produce. The tomatoes actually taste like a tomato, not like some red goo resembling a tomato. It will be a bummer in a couple months when winter hits and there's no more local, fresh produce, but until then I'm going to really enjoy it.
The other big change I've been making is reading labels, not just for the nutritional content (i.e. fat, protein, etc.), but to really look at the ingredients. I'm continuously blown away by how many things have added sweetener (usually corn syrup) in them - and products you would think shouldn't really need that much sweetener, things you might think of as "healthy", non-junk foods, like fruit juice, spaghetti sauce, deli meat, yogurt, and hummus. It's been a real eye-opener.
