http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKYyD14d_0

This clip is a trailer for the film Food Inc. directed by Robert Kenner, based partially on An Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. The documentary provides an in-depth look into many aspects of the food industry. Its goal is, essentially, to find out what we eat. The filmmakers trace the food from our dinner plates back to the farms where the food was grown/raised. The filmmakers try to figure out why we eat the things that we do, and if that food is most beneficial to our health.

When it comes to major food production, secrecy is key.  As stated in the video, the food industry has made it illegal for anything negative to be published about them.  Michael Pollon, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, mentions that the food industry is also attempting to make it illegal for any pictures taken inside industrial food operations to be published. All of this secrecy raises suspicion about the what is going into the food that we as Americans are consuming.  

In the video, it was said that Salmonella was found in peanut butter—Peter Pan’s Peanut Butter—and the E. Coli bacteria was found in spinach and apple juice. To hear that these packaged foods are contaminated with these strains of bacteria is horrifying. We make sure that we clean our meats and vegetables before we cook them, but what should we do with the packaged products? These bacteria strains are lethal. In the movie, a child who ate a hamburger contaminated with the E. Coli bacteria died 12 days after ingestion. This would just make us question everything we consume.

The food industry as a whole is run and can be summed up by one thing: money. Money is the driving force behind everything that goes on whether it is from the consumer’s point of view or the producer’s vantage point. The trailer shows a farmer saying “smells like money to me”, trying to portray what is the sole thing on the farmer’s mind. The trailer also shows a visual representation of two chickens growing side by side. A smaller chicken from 1950 would take 91 days to grow, while a much larger chicken today can be grown in 49 days. The point of this statistic is that farmer can use steroids or other enhancers to turn a bigger profit by getting more out of one chicken and producing them at a quicker pace. The video also says, “everything we’ve done in modern agriculture is to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper”, maximizing profit in other words. Money also plays a large role from a consumer’s stance. A woman is quoted as saying, “sometimes you look at a vegetable and say, well you can get two hamburgers for the same price”. When it comes down to it, many people are worried first and foremost about the cheapest way to eat, as opposed to worrying what is the healthiest way. Especially in bad economic times, the cheapest food is a path many Americans will choose. Once again, money is the number one thing considered by everybody when it comes to the food industry.

Discussion questions:

1. Should the food industry be treated differently than other industries with regard to the law attempting to ban photos taken of factory farm conditions from being published?

2. While it is hard to get the full picture in a 2-minute clip when the full film runs for an hour and a half, do you think that food in this country is a serious problem? If so, do you think that there is a way to stop it?

3. How did you feel about the comparison to the tobacco industry? Is this a fair comparison? Do you see any notable differences?

4. Where do we draw the line as to what is the best value for our money and what is a good choice health wise when it comes to what we consume?

5. How should we be expected to eat something that we are not allowed to see being produced?

Inaugural Post: Weekday Veg.

http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html

For my first example blog post, I chose a TED Lecture by Graham Hill called "Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian." To give a bit of background, TED is a non-profit organization that's dedicated to bringing together the best minds in the country to give short talks on important subjects such as education, the environment, war and foreign policy, technology, etc, etc. In this video, Graham Hill, creator of treehugger.com - a website to promote all things sustainable - gives a short, four minute talk on the topic of meat consumption and vegetarianism.

One of the effective strategies I noticed in Hill's talk is the use of rhetorical questions; that is, questions directed at the audience to bring them into the conversation and relate to their experience. Toward the beginning of the video, he confesses that, even given all he knows about the harmful impact of meat eating, he has had trouble taking the plunge and becoming a vegetarian. He asks the audience, "why was I stalling?". This question allows the audience to consider the reasons that they themselves may or may not be stalling when it comes to the question of vegetarianism. Later, he talks about vowing that each meal of meat would be his last, but continuing to eat it regardless and asks, "sound familiar?". Again, with this question, he tries to help the audience relate to his experience. Maybe they've felt like this before.

Another effective strategy is the symmetry of his talk. Two times at the beginning, he lists the drawbacks of meat consumption to our health, the animals, and greenhouse gas emissions. Then, once he poses his solution of weekday vegetarianism, he lists the benefits of this choice a couple of times as well ("health, pocketbook, environment, animals"). This technique of listing and recapitulating his reasons for going weekday veg, as he says, works very effectively to help the audience remember all of the benefits to be gained from reducing meat consumption.

I also enjoy the humor in his talk, for example, when he says "Imagine your last hamburger." Another quotable line that seemed significant was his final statement that, "if all of us ate half as much meat, it would be like half of us are vegetarians." His position makes a lot of sense to me because it does seem like vegetarianism and meat eating are presented to society as extreme, opposing choices, while in reality, we could all do a lot more good by simply picking a more mindful place in the middle.

Questions for further discussion:

1) Which parts of the talk did you connect with most? Did the talk relate at all to your personal experiences?

2) Which parts of the talk seemed most convincing to you? What kind of evidence does Hill use to support his points and does it seem valid to you?

3) What are your impressions of vegetarianism - does it seem like a radical position? Does this more middle of the road option seem appealing?

4) What kind of persona does Hill present? Is he likable? Trustworthy? Encouraging? How does he create this persona throughout the talk?