Review of a Review

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: “Film could make you lose your lunch”

Competencies: eating/nutrition, cognitive hardiness, economics

Who benefits: any individual

Consultant Usage: health coaches, nutritionists

What’s it about? This a quirky and unintended follow-up to last week’s posting.  Last week I reviewed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  It was in part a scathing attack on corporate agribusiness and the harm it causes you, me and the rest of the world. 

This Blog supports eating and nutrition as part of its StressScan site that addresses the lifestyle, coping, and psychosocial factors of daily life.  I thought I would do last week’s review and be done with it…at least for a while.  You know, food for thought and move on.  But no!  This is where the “quirky and unintended” comes in.  This weekend Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times – he of the two thumbs up fame, came out with the damndest review I ever read.  It was more of an editorial than a review, which he admits by writing “This doesn’t read one thing like a movie review.”  But the damning isn’t just in the style of the review, it also in his extraordinary condemnation the giant corporations that control the growth, processing and sale of food in this country. 

The movie is “Food, Inc.”  The film is a documentary on the industrialization of agriculture by just a few companies and he describes it as “simply frightening”.  Ebert gives the film a 3.5 out of 4.

Here is a great quote from the review: “I figured it wasn’t important for me to go into detail about the photography and the editing.  I just wanted to scare the bejesus out of you, which is what ‘Food, Inc.” did to me.”

I made two assumptions and I was wrong on both.  First, from reading the review I was sure he was getting his facts and figures from Kingsolver’s book.  Wrong.  I also assumed initially that this must be another Michael Moore movie.  Wrong again.  The movie and Ebert’s research are based on the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (which I have not read) and the movie is directed by Robert Kenner.

Like his review, I don’t have a standardized way to end this posting.  If you are really concerned about your own personal health or the health of those you may be responsible for, you probably should read one of the two books or see the movie.  But there is a lot of unpleasantness in all of this.  And our world, this country and our local areas, no matter where you live, certainly have enough issues on their plate without adding another one.  Yet something in the back of my mind says this may be a coming global issue that surfaces much like climate warning has in the past 10 years. 

But that is all pure speculation, so I will end with personal testimony.  As a result of reading Kingsolver’s book, I have altered my food purchasing and eating habits.  I go to the local Farmer’s Market every Tuesday and Saturday.  I now buy local meat products with full knowledge of how the animals were raised and fed.  And I now look at labels in the store to find products made close to this area.  One person, small changes, making a very small difference.  But it feels right and frankly, I feel healthier. 

Catch you later.
[tags] food, diets, nutrition, health, food health, agribusiness, industrialization of agriculture, Monsanto, Dow Chemicals, farmers market, farmers markets, slow food, slow food movement, slow food international, sustainable agriculture, sustainable farming, food policy, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.