Food Inc

What does a normal 23 year old do on Friday night??? Give your liver a workout?? Make irresponsible choices involving boys with accents?? Grab some brewskies with your pals??

I ask this because I am so not a normal 23 year old.

What did my Friday consist of???  Gym, then supper, then watching a food documentary, and then blogging about it. This is my life.

I (and Mike) watched a documentary on netflix called Food Inc. It has been on netflix for a while now and I was always tempted yet afraid to watch it.  Basically it is about the food industry in the states, and the unethical treatment of workers, animals, the environment, the market etc etc etc. The reason why I was interested in watching this is I have weird obsession with documentaries, and this one tugged my healthy lifestyle heartstrings. And here is the reasons why I was terrified to watch it.

First of all, I love the idea of organic, natural, local food. I love knowing where my food came from. However, this kind of whole eating isn't completely budget friendly. So I try to find a happy medium of eating local, buying in season stuff, and still saving money. I also read the labels, and most of my stuff does come from basic ingredients.

This documentary basically summed up my concerns of not eating ethically, which I totally knew it would do. And it made me sadface.

I have (had) a pretty sheltered view of what a farm was like. My uncle runs a beef farm, and near my home town is a pretty rural area. I have been to a dairy farm. In my mind, a farm is a place where cows get to have a good cow life and then they go to the big pasture in the sky...and then they end up on our plate. Or they have a good cow life, give us some milk, and stay happy.

Ok, maybe I wasn't quite that naive, but that is the farm that I envision. I don't envision mass farming, I don't envision ammonia and chicken going together. And all this makes me feel icky.

One thing I appreciated about the documentary was that it wasn't against meat. It showed a non factory farmer raising his chickens and then butchering them, it still made me uncomfortable, but it wasn't even close to as bad as seeing some of the meat processing plants. It also talked a lot about soy beans, where 90% of soy beans in the states have been genetically modified. I think people get "ethical eating" confused with being vegetarian, and it so isn't. It is just as hard to find non modified veggie products (especially soy) as it is to find non modified chicken.

That all being said, anyone who has any interest in this kind of thing should definitely watch the documentary, it was really good!

But it does mean that tomorrow, when I go to do my groceries at No Frills, I will be thinking a little bit more about what I put in my cart. And that is going to be hard. I already try to balance healthy products, money, and now ethical food comes in to play. Ugh.. why can't I just not care and eat kraft dinner and frozen burgers. Boo.

I may do a follow up post tomorrow about what I bought this week, and how much my budget was impacted. I'm not going to crazy, but just change a few things. I'll let you know!

Anyone else watch Food Inc, what are your thoughts?? Anyone else wish that healthy, ethical choices were cheaper???