If Americans came with user-care manuals, the section on feeding would be reduced to a sidebar… 1) Open mouth; 2) Shovel in crap. Heck, my friends spend more time, money and consideration feeding their dog than it seems most parents do packing their kids’ lunches. Even a bulldog would turn tail from Kraft Yackables.

Of course, the reason our palates are now as desensitized as once were SuperMasochist Bob Flanagan’s genitals may well be because we’ve stopped thinking of food as a bounty and rather as a commodity. Thus, ordering chemically-laden, market-designed approximations of sustenance — such as the McRib Sandwich replete with molded “bones”! — is as natural as refueling the Escalade so one can drive the ten blocks to work daily. Even if these practices are as SICK as driving nails through one’s penis for sexual pleasure, corporate interests have successfully reframed Nutrition as a matter of personal choice and objective taste. (Dammit, it’s my right to eat like an uneducated pig!) Sorry, folks, Nutrition is a science. It may be inexact, but I can guarantee you studies prove Mexi-fries are as much an affront to your digestive tract as to Mexicans. (I’m pretty sure Pancho Villa wasn’t filling up on deformed tater-tots no matter how revolutionary either may have been.)

This summer, the encyclopedic documentary, FOOD, INC. catalogued some of the most common and grievous absurdities of America’s industrialized food fixation. Recently, I joined KUOW’s chip-craving interlocutor Jeannie Yandel, for a conversation about what other films about food are fit for our consumption. Click here to hear our talk and to download a bonus list of other devourable features.

(*I must add that KING CORN should appear on this list as well, but does not… because I forget things? Thanks to David Ward for reminding me about this provocative doc which should be ranked as high as… an elephant’s eye.*)

And, click here for The Warren Report’s podcast with Elise Pearlstein, producer of FOOD, INC. Or, here, for my talk with Michael Pollan.

Bon appetit!

Warren

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If you’ve read Michael Pollan and you’ve seen FOOD, INC., chances are you’re not super-sizing your meals or expecting to find a movie-marketing doo-dad in your lunchbox.

However, chances are you still have many friends and family members convinced “organic” is just a Madison Avenue buzzword to bilk city-slickers out of a few extra bucks. And, sometimes they’re right. Nevertheless, these folks remain transfixed with trans-fats, stuffing themselves with “food-like substances” that have shelf lives longer than the halflife of Plutonium 239. My mantra: if it won’t rot, don’t eat it.

So, how do we introduce the issues surrounding organic food and farming? Consider this: EAT ME That’s the title of The Warren Report’s half-hour special showcasing the documentary, THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN as well as interviews with the movie’s eponymous subject, author Nina Planck (Real Food: What to Eat and Why) and Colin McCrate, founder of The Seattle Urban Farm Company. Together, they use facts, fun and implosion therapy to get me over my fear of dirt and my melon-picking ignorance.

Watch the entire show, EAT ME, for yourself, for FREE, on-line now — via iTunes, Libsyn or The Warren Report. Then, share with friends who still believe the tip of the food pyramid is comprised of Ding Dongs and Pixy Stix.

Bon appetit!

Download EAT ME or Watch Below

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Tags:	colin mccrate • eat me • farming • michael pollan • nina planck • organic farming • organic food • the real dirt on farmer john • the seattle urban farm company • the warren report • warren etheredge

Editorial Note: We’re happy to introduce Warren Etheredge of The Warren Report as a Contributing Editor on the Foodista Blog. Be sure and check out the video clips below.

Which would you rather eat?

a) a genetically-modified, patent-protected soybean increasingly devoid of nutrients that may put all family farmers out of business?

b) a hamburger comprised of dozens of the ground-down slaughtered carcasses of cattle — raised more cruelly than Augusten Burroughs, Christina Crawford and Antwone Fisher — and padded with an ammonia-cleansed filler of fat, gristle and trimmings?

c) your words?

FOOD, INC. poses this question indirectly, but it is the crux of the movie. If we truly are what we eat, shouldn’t we review our options a little more judiciously? And, shouldn’t we discuss our choices publicly before our Freedom of Speech is bought out by the very business interests that intend to limit them?

Robert Kenner ’s well-packaged documentary serves up the issues in a manner suited for mass consumption. The film covers all the inherent problems with our increasingly industrialized food chain from the main ingredient of chicken soup to Big Food’s litigious oppression of growers and consumers that’s just nuts. We learn that poultry-breeders are today’s indentured servants, seed-cleaners are tomorrow’s witches and grocery-shoppers are an endangered species because food-like substances being marketed and sold to us are killing us slowly. (Think you’re healthier than your grandparents? Guess again. They didn’t stop thrice daily at the Yum-Yum Snack Shack for a Mega-Meal and Jug-o-Pop. Grandma and Grandpa also got out in the sun — to work! — once in a while.)

Authors Eric Shlosser and Michael Pollan have stated their convincing cases before — in Fast Food Nation and In Defense of Food, respectively. Here, they offer up their worries and warnings in bite-sized chunks that serve as a narrative backbone, along with pinches and dashes of like-minded mavericks such as Joel (Salad Bar Beef) Salatin of Polyface Farm and Gary (Stirring It Up) Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm (The latter is a entrepreneurial champion of the commodification of the organic movement; the former, an authoritative advocate for the (re-)simplification of the food cycle. Bet he read Snip, Snap, Snurr and The Buttered Bread.) Naturally, the big cheeses of Big Food refuse to go on camera, on record. Consequently, it is the repressed testimony of Republican mom Barbara Kowalcyk that lifts and separates FOOD, INC. from the cornucopia of related documentaries. Having lost her 2-year-old son to an E. Coli outbreak in 2001, Ms. Kowalcyk now fights for food safety legislation despite the efforts of lobbyists and lawyers to shut her up. Sadly, these money-launderers and three-bit shysters have succeeded to a great extent. Congress has done little to protect the public. And, when pressed to explain how her own eating habits have changed since her son’s death, Ms. Kowalcyk zips her lips for fear of prosecution. (You’ve got to see it to bereave it.) Apparently, it’s okay for the food industry to kill kids with tainted burgers, yet it is not okay for to her to have it her way and speak her piece.  Even Elise Pearlstein, the producer of FOOD, INC., shied away from talking about her diet, during our conversation, for fear of retaliation. Only Oprah is bold and wealthy enough to speak up and shill out for a dream team of defense attorneys. But what good is the First Amendment if Free Speech is only available for purchase? What good is the FDA if its policing-powers are as morally-corrupted by conflicts of interest as Eliot Spitzer at a Hookers-For-Justice conference? What good is the federally-approved food pyramid if its corn-and-grain keystones serve only as building blocks for a fatter, not fitter, America?

FOOD, INC. frames the dilemma, offers multiple choices. THINK before you bite. Read Pollan, Schlosser and Salatin. Read Nina Planck’s Real Food: What to Eat and Why, the best blend of the sense and science of nutrition. Better yet, visit a farm, not just your farmers’ market. If you’ve got kids, take ‘em. If you’ve got fists, shake ‘em at Tyson, Perdue, Monsanto and so many more. Remind yourself where your meals come from before saying grace. Not everything that lands on our plates is worth being thankful for, but by changing your shopping habits, you can ensure you are blessed. Think global, eat local.

(For more information on food issues, purchase a copy of The Warren Report: EAT ME, a half-hour investigation of organic food and farming with special guests Nina Planck, Colin McCrate and John Peterson of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN The dvd — which contains bonus materials including a 40-minute panel discussion with Peterson, McCrate and Maria Hines, chef/owner of Tilth — sells for only $10, plus $5 p&h. Order on-line or write to warren@thewarrenreport.com)

FOOD, Inc. Interview

Eat Me Trailer

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