As if I needed more reasons...

Last night Mrs. Granola and I went to see this movie:



Yikes! She has been a vegetarian for a very long time, at least since high school, and she eats very, very healthy food. She's much more diligent about the food she and her family eats than I am, but I don't think Mr. EM and I are any slouches in the food choices department either, especially when it comes to the M.'s. To say that we were shaken a bit by what we saw would be an understatement.

This movie didn't tell me a lot that I didn't already know because what I feed my family has been a priority since I became pregnant with Big M and I keep up on my research. We were vegetarians before then, but our diet was still lacking in substance. I wasn't too concerned about representing food groups or making sure that certain vitamins and minerals were part of our meals. I had this notion that since we weren't eating meat, we were eating healthy. That was not always necessarily the case. Ever opened up a carton of ice cream? No meat in there. And I've never seen meat in a box of Oreos or a bag of potato chips either.

This movie doesn't vilify meat, but it does vilify corporate farming and with good reason. However, meat wasn't the central focus. It was the corporatizing of EVERYTHING we eat, even the organic food that we see in grocery stores. Nothing is out there for the welfare of the consumer, everything is out there for the welfare of the corporations. It's disgusting. In this country we have to pay more to eat well. Where is the logic there? A major overhauling of the American diet could do a lot for the health care crisis, no? A thinner, stronger, healthier population would not need to rely so much on the health care industry. Win-win, right? Not to mention the added benefit of easing the burden on the environment and allowing farmers to do what they've been trained and love to do...farm the land with their own hands, rather than under the thumbs of corporations who tell them what to do and when to do it in order to produce MORE, MORE, MORE.

One of the first quotes in the movie was something like, "The American diet has changed more in the last 50 years than it did in the 10,000 years before that." That statement packs a lot of punch.

Oh, yeah, and as if Jesus Camp didn't do enough to keep me disgusted with the religion, I'm now reading this:



I know that many organized religions out there are not like these, but both of these examples further my belief that it's just not for me.

The moral of this post? Eat locally, visit farmers' markets, read food labels and think for yourself!

(Earth Muffin is now stepping down off her soapbox.)