The Truth about Your Food Supply

If you’ve known, me, Fitness Friday Girl, for any length of time, you’ve heard me harp about eating clean, staying away from processed food and buying all-natural and organic. And though you can’t see me through your computer screen, I wriggle and squirm at the thought of eating conventional (non-organic) meat products.  In fact, I have completely banned fast food hamburgers–well, all fast food, really–from the Cooper Diet and have not served beef at home in years. Ask my kids. It’s true.

I reached that conclusion about six years ago after watching the movie Super-Size Me (you can download for free by clicking that link) and reading the book Fast Food Nation. If you haven’t exposed yourself to these two resources, I consider them required reading/viewing. There will be a quiz.

Since that time, I’ve read a number of other books and articles on the same subject. I’m relieved to see that slowly, the truth of what America is truly eating is coming to light.

As if I needed any more ammunition for my ground meat phobia, I crawled into bed the other night and watched the documentary Food, Inc. The producers of this movie (one of whom is the author of Fast Food Nation) set out to trace the origin of their food–from the grocery store shelf to the farm. Easy, right? Wrong. Turns out, our food doesn’t so much come from farms any longer. Where does it come from?

Check out this trailer:

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But wait! There’s MORE!  I have to show you just one thing…

Just prior to this segment of the movie, they discussed at length the problem of contaminated meat–a result of our current meat production system (cramming an inhumane number of cows onto a lot, growing them too rapidly, feeding them corn instead of grass, allowing them to wallow knee-deep in their own feces, mixing sick cows with well cows, etc.) Rather than fixing the system, our meat-packing industry has come up with this brilliant high-tech solution.

Note: this “filler” is in 70% of all ground beef. The makers of this product hope to soon have it in all ground beef.

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What I loved most about this movie is that the writers/producers did not just plop a load of disgusting information and images on you and then leave you there wondering how in the world you are going to feed your family today. Instead, they offer viable solutions and leave you feeling empowered to change the system.

This movie will rock your world. I’m not kidding.

Food, Inc. is available on DVD. If you have Netflix, you can watch it now on your computer. And if you want to watch it in 8-minute segments, the entire movie is available for free on You Tube.

Run…don’t walk to see this movie. You have a right to know what you are putting into your body and feeding your family. And besides, running is a little harder on the joints, but you will burn more calories.