Food Binge

Wow - two great food-related shows on PBS last night. First up, we watched "Food" on KPBS, which they've been hyping advertising for weeks. I was excited that a show about how our food is grown, produced, and then delivered to us would be accessible to so many. As someone who's watched "Supersize Me," "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," "The Future of Food," and most recently, "Food Inc."; I feel like I'm pretty informed about CAFOs, fish farms, and CSAs. So, really, there wasn't a lot of new material in "Food" for me. BUT! I did get my first visual of what a fish farm looks like. Wow. Ginormous. And freaky. It's like a big tent in the ocean, filled with fish.

Also, I was excited to see that a local chicken farmer was interviewed for the show and talk about his organic, free-range chickens that sell for about $20/bird. Right now, I'm buying Rosie's organic, free-range chickens from Henry's for about $13/bird. At first, this was a bit of a shocker. But with the way I'm cooking now, I get two, sometimes three, meat meals out of one bird, plus about four quarts of stock, which allows me to make two big batches of soup. So really, it's not too bad. Now, the big question: am I ready to pay an additional $7 for a local, organic, free-range chicken?

As we were getting ready for bed, we saw that "King Corn" was coming on. It's about two friends from Boston who move to Iowa to grow a single acre of corn, in order to see what happens to their crop in the industrial food system. Filled with stop-action filming and hysterical antics like trying to brew their own batch of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), it was quite entertaining - and informative! I'd been wanting to see this for a while, and so we were up for another two hours. So it was a late night for us...

Did you happen to watch last night? If "Food" whetted your appetite on finding more about our food system, here's a list of some movies that you might enjoy. I give it double props for listing some uplifting movies. Stories that have, if not a happy ending, at least a hopeful ending. 'Cause even though the whole thing can be a downer, I'm an optimist at heart. I look forward to checking them out.