Super Size Me

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
$12.95
Wal-Mart employees are being exploited, but not as badly as the Chinese. Don't buy anything made in China! Wal-Mart stores have destroyed local mom-n-pop stores; and not just one mom-n-pop per city/town, but several! They take good paying jobs away from the hard working and then give them the pitiful job at their huge stores.

King Corn (Green Packaging)
$26.95

For those who were shocked and amazed by the workings of the food industry in the documentary Food, Inc. There is another little known film that came out in 2006 that serves as a sort of compendium project. King Corn documents a year in the life of two Bostonians who lease an acre of land in Iowa to grow a crop of corn.

Ironically, the college chums, a couple of likeable fellows with an affinity for whiffle-ball and fast food, both had a great grandfather from the same county in Iowa. So once the two find a landowner to lease them the property and a farmer to help them plant their crop, they start to explore not only their familial roots, but the roots of the corn industry. As the corn grows, so does their search, bringing them to some truly eye-opening realizations about the US food industry.

Though a lot of the information has been touched on in films like Food, Inc. and Super Size Me as well as books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, King Corn delivers it from a different perspective. By telling the story from a would-be farmer's perspective, the filmmakers are just as amazed as we are when they learn firsthand some of the inner workings of the agricultural industry. From the realization that US farmers are paid primarily through government subsidies since they often actually lose money on their crops to the fact that the majority of corn grown in Iowa is so genetically altered that it is not suitable to be eaten, even for those who have heard this information before, the film delivers it in such a compelling way that it seems fresh and consistently alarming.

The filmmakers deliver an evenhanded expose of the corn industry that doesn't seem as scathing as so many documentaries of late have. Nevertheless, by the end, when they actually have to take their harvest to market, you can really feel their heartbreak as they sell their prize crop with no idea where it will be going or what it will be used for. Will it be one of the 20,000 acres of corn it takes just to sweeten the sodas consumed in Brooklyn, NY in one year? Will it be used to quickly fatten up cattle? Or will it be used in one of the thousands of other food products made primarily of corn?

The film points out that we now spend less of our income on food than any generation in history, and fewer of us are needed to produce that food. However, considering that we are sacrificing so much of the nutritional value to keep costs down in a society with an explosion of problems like obesity and obesity, we have to wonder if we shouldn't reconsider our food budget. As one interviewee says of the government agricultural subsidies, "We subsidize the Happy Meals, but we don't subsidize the healthy ones." And yet so many of the farmers in the film insisted that if the American people demanded healthy food, they would be glad to grow it, but the current schism of quickly grown, high yield, low nutrition agriculture is going to be hard to break from. Nevertheless, considering that the impetus for the film was the realization that for the first time in history, this generation's life expectancy is lower than the generation before, our diets need to become a higher priority.

Super Size Me
$9.95
This video is a real eye-opener for me, about obesity and Americans. I am not considered 'obese' in the medical field....but, I have now lost 30 lbs and this movie kept me motivated (or disgusted) enough to make sure I make this life-change forever. I recommend this movie to everyone!!! I showed my son, 13, my boyfriend and his son, 9, to make a serious impression on their futures. I know you can watch this movie for free over the internet, but, I bought it so that I can offer it to anyone, friends, co-workers, family...etc...so they would not have an excuse to NOT watch it! Way to go Morgan. You did not jeopardize your health in vain. I am very grateful to you, for changing many, many lives.

Sincerely,
Lighter in Texas.

Food, Inc.
$26.98
If you're like me, you know all about Michal Pollan's work, you know our current food production system is unsustainable, and yet, your food consumption habits haven't changed all that much. Little by little, I've made improvements, and it's the information gleaned from books and documentaries like this one that have caused me to make those incremental changes. Good ones. If you don't have as much of a background in food stuff, watch the movie for sure! And maybe add a few things to your reading list: The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Super-Size Me, Fast Food Nation, and anything else you hear about while you're learning more. There are few things in life that contribute as much to who we are as what we eat. And there are few ways that we can make as great an environmental impact as in our food purchasing decisions. Learn all you can, and choose. For your own health, and the planet's.