Monday, August 16, 2010

Hippie Documentary of the week: The Future of Food

I've been watching a LOT of documentaries recently. It's become a bit of an obsession, actually. Thanks to my Netflix subscription, I don't have to go to the video store, or even wait for them to get mailed to me. Most documentaries are available to watch instantly from my computer. Pretty convenient. I consider myself a pretty educated individual. I like to think my eyes are open to a lot of what is happening in the world. But every documentary I watch proves to me how little I know about certain topics, and leaves me wanting to know more. And so I watch more documentaries. And research certain topics on the internet. And read. And watch more documentaries. In the last few weeks, I've watched more doumentaries than I had in my entire life prior. As I said, it's become a bit of an obsession. And so, I thought I would share some of these documentaries on my blog in case you are interested. Not all the films are big names like Super Size Me (although I did enjoy that one). The film I just got finished watching is called The Future of Food. The Future of Food discusses the overwhelming trend of Genetically Modified foods and its implications on agriculture, our food, our society, and our health. The film discusses the process of genetic modification and the controversy that surrounds it. It looks at the huge corporations that utilize these methods (ahem, Monsanto) and how they bully the small farmer for monetary gain and greater control of the overall market. The film also explores the controversial concept of patenting living things. Did you know there is a patent on a gene linked to breast cancer and that researchers who are trying to find ways to treat/ cure breast cancer have to pay patent fees to use this gene in their research? To me that is both mind-boggling and infuriating. This is just one of the interesting tidbits I learned from this film. I found The Future of Food to be very intriguing and eye-opening. It's a quick 88 minutes, and in my opinion, definitely worth checking out. If you don't have Netflix, you can watch it here for free.

2 comments:

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  2. Oops. The 1st comment didn't post right.

    The Business of Being Born is a good documentary, although not food-related. I happened to see it as a public health student before I was pregnant and just had to watch it again while I was pregnant.

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