Food-Related Movies and TV

One thing I love about reading running blogs is that everyone, like me, loves The Biggest Loser!  For years, it was my go-to junk reality TV show and no one understood my love for it, but now I can share this secret vice with the blogging world.  Although I am not on a weight loss journey, I find this show incredibly inspiring, even if I think it borders borderline verbal abuse and conveys way too simplistic ideas about weight loss.  Anyway, I am all about this show and always willing to discuss it :)

Last night, I showed students in my food class Food, Inc. a documentary from 2008 about all the problems with our food system.  While it is really a great film in showing the troubles with the food system, it is really terrible in the little hope it provides.  I think all the students left feeling completely helpless.  The people who are in government in charge of watching over food industries are the same ones that used the run the same corporations, so there is little oversight.  And, meat production is a terrible, inhumane process.  Plus, organic foods are not that different from non-organic.  Need I go on?  If you haven't seen this, it is depressing, but it is so important to watch to be an educated person in society today.

But there is hope!  In two weeks my class is watching a documentary called Urban Roots about the revitalization of downtown, urban Detroit through farms.   Imagine a city going through a massive economic downturn where all of the factory workers get laid off and land prices plummet.  What happens to a place like that?  People move in and start farming in empty abandoned lots?  Really?  This is a really great, inspiring movie about what good things can come out of complete loss to an area.  It is really amazing that so many young people who want to be farmers but cannot afford land are moving to places like Detroit and Flint where land prices are so cheap.  Watch this film!

Finally, another kind of depressing film is Forks Over Knives.  It is a health-related film about all the problems related to our industrial diet.  While I do think part of the issues of obesity are over-simplified (I will write another post on this one day), it does a good job of showing how over-industrialized our system has become.  It is so bad for not only our health, but also animals, ecosystems, and farms.  

Sigh.  After my last post (by the way, I appreciate all of the positive responses from you guys.  Runners have the best perspectives on life, I am convinced), I really just want to go move somewhere and start my own farm.  I spent a summer in Maine apprenticing on a small organic farm, I worked on Saturdays in CO at a CSA farm, and I have worked with Chinese farmers in fields in China!  Maybe I should move to Detroit....

Has anyone seen any of these movies?  Where do you get your food from?