Food, Inc.

After holing ourselves up in the condo all day yesterday (dreary weather and Adam has a cold), we finally watched a movie I'd been wanting to see for awhile last night, Food, Inc.


I'm so conflicted as to how I really feel about the movie. There were so many parts that were difficult to watch and I had to turn my head several times because some of the animal scenes were so bad! I remember in high school history discussing Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and hearing the horrors that happened in the early 1900's meat packing plants. Unbeknownst to most of us, we have the same things going on now in our meat industry but most of the workers are undocumented, illegal immigrants so it's happening in our country and right under our noses and nobody seems to care about it.

They did a scene with a Latino family from California that bothered the hell out of me. They were at the Burger King drive thru because they were trying to make the case that they can only afford to eat off the dollar menu. Later they tell you that the father has Type 2 diabetes and needs two medicines that were upwards of $130 a month each. They show you how inexpensive it is for the entire family of four to eat off the dollar menu, rather than buying "expensive veggies" at the market. I believe this to be extremely unfortunate but only partially true. First of all, if what happens on the Biggest Loser is true, we've seen several contestants completely reverse their Type 2 diabetes and come off all of their medications. If that family had the extra $260 to spend on food, they'd be better equipped to afford what is truly nutritious. Plus, their bill at Burger King was $11 and some change, almost $4 of that was toward two Sprites and a large Dr. Pepper. Instead of drinking the sodas, they could have had water for free and bought quite a few pounds of veggies instead of the burgers and chicken sandwiches. I do see the filmmaker's point (to a point) that the food industry has figured out a way to manipulate everything so that processed foods are cheaper than buying most nutrient-high foods. Just look at bottled water for example, in most places it's more expensive than buying a coke.



As far as personal changes that I want to make, I was horrified seeing the parts about our meat supply. It's easy to see why obesity is an epidemic in this country after seeing Food, Inc. It's not always the quantity of the foods we eat, it's sometimes about the fact that almost everything we eat has been genetically or hormonally engineered to be bigger. I know that we can afford to buy organic. And in reality, Whole Foods is far and away the closest grocery store to our house. I want to start making better choices not only to make my "vote" for our food supply count but also because I feel like I'll be putting better things in my body. It's hard though because so many of the things that are great for the WW Plan are heavily processed. A case in point is the Fiber One bars that many of my fellow meeting participants are in to. Look at the ingredient list on the box of one of those bad boys... I'll stick with the Kashi bar equivalent, thank you! In order to keep the processed foods down, I try to eat lots of veggies. To go back to the Latino family I mentioned above, the mother tried to make the case that the burger filled them up better than eating an apple. I counter with it's all what your body is used to. My first week on WW, I was ravenous all day every day. The second day, we went to a restaurant and I ordered a salad to stay on points and I wanted to punch everyone else at the table for ordering things that I wanted (lasagna, french fries, etc.). I remember feeling SO CRANKY that night because all these veggies that WW considers to be "filling foods" were not filling the hole in my stomach at all. Fast forward two weeks, I can eat the apple instead of the burger and still feel satisfied. My body took some time to get used to this new regime that I forced upon it but now I'm feeling filled up by the so-called filling foods. If that family gave it some time, I know they could live a healthier lifestyle.


This post has really been all over the place but I really struggle with food and how I feel about it on a regular basis. I went all out veg for awhile after reading the vegan-Bible, Skinny Bitch (not vegan though, I love cheese and milk too much and raw food diets, uh, no). I feel off the vegetarian wagon after a trip to Argentina. I had to have the steak!! And it was the best meat I've ever tasted in my life, most likely because it wasn't all jacked up like our beef supply. Movies like Food, Inc. make me want to run away to Europe, where the food and alcohol hasn't been completely processed and tainted with preservatives! I want to buy my eggs non-refrigerated. I want to eat lots of butter and cheese and be skinny like the French. I want to be able to go to a market like this:

In my next life, can I come back as a Parisian?

I want to re-evaluate the choices that I'm making on a regular basis. There are farmer's markets even here in the city and I want to commit to going to them more. I want to start buying organic dairy products for sure and look at the meat choices I'm making. We'll see how it all works out.

Movie Review: The Soloist

In case you were unaware, I'm not exactly a movie buff. Adam and I have a membership to Netflix but we don't move through our queue very quickly because I usually procrastinate about watching the movies. Yes, I procrastinate over doing something that most people find fun... odd. I think I just struggle with the idea of sitting down for 2 hours and not doing anything else, which is the only way I like to watch movies that I haven't seen. I'm also about as picky about movies as I am about food. I dislike watching anything scary, gory or overall extremely upsetting (unless it's based on reality and in that case, I try to stomach it, i.e. Flight 93).

*On an only semi-related note, the last movie I saw in the movie theaters was right after I moved to Chicago and was Mamma Mia, with my old roomie, Darin. The last movie that Adam saw in the theaters was the Dark Knight. Both of these were before we met each other. Somehow, we have unofficially started a "thing" where we're going to see how long we go before we see a movie in the theaters again. It's not to say that we didn't give it the old college try, we had several movie nights planned last year but when you don't have a car during the Chicago winter, it's hard to get motivated to get out and pay $15 a piece to see a movie and freeze your buns off. Hence, the Netflix account. I also like to think this has saved us hundreds of dollars.

But back to the real purpose of this post. Every now and then I see a movie that touches me. We've seen some good ones this year (A Mighty Heart, Slumdog Millionaire). On Monday night, we watched The Soloist. Adam put it on the queue after hearing about it from his brother. I had briefly read something about it, I feel like it was Oscar buzz? I hope so!

The Soloist features Robert Downey, Jr. (who has always been a fav of mine) as Steve Lopez, reporter for the LA Times. He writes a column called Points West and stumbles upon a homeless man playing (and playing well) a two-stringed violin and starts talking to him. During the conversation, he finds out that the man is named Nathaniel Ayers (played by Jaime Foxx) and that he attended Julliard. This piques Lopez' intrest and he begins writing stories about him. A woman donates a cello by sending it to Lopez' office (Ayers' original instrument but too valuable for him to live with on the streets) and so begins their unlikely friendship, despite Ayers' mental illness and Lopez' reluctance to commit to friends, family, anything.

Just to warn you, I had a couple of spotty tears during the flick but the best way I could describe my feelings and flood of tears at the end to Adam was, "my heart just hurts". It's a great movie and it deeply moved me but it, like most movies based on true stories, was realistic and sad. I would say, don't let the potential Kleenex raid deter you from seeing this movie. It's really good and has a great cast.

I believe that it is based on a book so if you aren't good at sitting through movies at home, like me, you can always go the reading route. Cheers and happy viewing!