Food, Inc. – Watch it Free Through Thursday

So after all that heavy reading last week, you’ll be happy to know that this post is devoted entirely to getting you to go watch TV.

My sister (who shall henceforth be officially known as the RPP Research Department), sent me yet another great tip last week, this one via the Arlington Montessori Action Committee listserv (big surprise: there’s a lot of overlap between the AMAC & RPP): PBS will be offering the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. (yes, here we go with the food thing again) in its entirety through Thursday of this week, here.

I have not seen this yet, myself, as it does not currently have precedence in my Netflix queue over the third season of Mad Men and Blades of Glory (but it’s in position number five, I swear!), plus I have a very strong preference for watching videos on our one ridiculously enormous TV, from the comfort of a sofa with six or seven blankets, to the alternative: suboptimal computer screens with either headphone input or infernally uncomfortable desk chairs.

But all whining aside, yes, I should have watched this by now, especially with all the food-centric discussion here of late, and a synopsis like this:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli — the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”), Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms’ Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Food, Inc. will be accompanied by Notes on Milk, a short variation of the 2007 feature documentary Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink. Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum, whose Hybrid aired on POV in 2002, take a quirky and poetic look at some lesser-known aspects of America’s favorite drink: the industry’s spiritual underpinnings, politics and the struggle of independent farmers.

Go watch it.  I may begrudgingly get the headphones after all, to plug into my laptop in the ‘boudoiffice,’ so I can at least replicate the six or seven blanket scenario.  Then we can all be horrified together, and discuss!

Happy Viewing,

Red Pill Mama