You Are What You Eat? Uh-oh!

When Valiant had his wisdom teeth extracted, we were pretty much housebound for the first few days. We used that time to catch up on some of the documentaries we'd been wanting to watch. Two I thought I'd share with you were Food, Inc. and SuperSize Me. They were both quite good and both available via streaming from Netflix. (You can also get them sent to you via DVD.)
Food, Inc. is basically a movie synopsis of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. It was a fabulous overview of where our food comes from, how the animals that provide our food are cared for, and what is going into our "processed" foods. At ages 10 and 13, both of my children found the movie quite compelling and thought provoking. Since I've been working towards improving our diets and sourcing our food locally, this movie helped the kids understand my decisions. I highly recommend watching this movie if you have any curiosity about the food industry.

SuperSize Me is pretty well known, but I'd resisted watching it because I'd heard that it specially picked McDonald's to the exclusion of other fast food restaurants and I didn't like that concept. Morgan Spurlock did feature McDonald's in his month-long experiment, but only because it is the most ubiquitous of the fast food chains, not because it is unique in the industry. This movie takes a hard look at just how much processed food has become part of our daily lives and just how much of it our children are eating. Rather than condemning one particular fast food chain, Mr. Spurlock really wants us to take a long, hard look at how much processed food has entered our diets and what it is doing to our overall health. You can watch SuperSize Me for free at hulu.com.

After watching both these movies, I can honestly say that if you'd like a better understanding of the nation's food industry, you won't regret watching them.