A Nudge Toward Better Choices: "Food, Inc."

We watched "Food, Inc." last night, because I'd been feeling discouraged and needed a fresh nudge toward making better choices. I'd seen plenty of excerpts from the film and listened to plenty of interviews with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. We've even taken our grandchildren to Joel Salatin's farm in Virginia, to show them healthy cattle, pigs and chickens on an actual family farm.

Even with that much background knowledge, the film is powerful. It's hard to describe the contrast between the popular images of wholesome agriculture promoted by advertisers and food packaging with the reality of industrial farming revealed in the film.

This week I'm making pastries with lard rendered down from pork scraps purchased at a local store. They make a great effort at promoting their meat as "natural," but that only means the animals had no antibiotics or hormones for 6 weeks before slaughter. I have no illusions about happy pigs cavorting in fields of clover. But I am also confident that my pork fat was cut the day I purchased it, in the butcher's space visible behind the meat counter. It was not washed down with ammonia or chlorine and the only processing done was in my own kitchen.

At a different store, we buy almond milk by the half gallon. Until recently, this "big box" discount super-store offered soy as their only alternative to cow's milk. We asked for almond milk, and we kept asking. Within about a month, almond milk began appearing regularly, first in a high-priced specialty brand, but soon as a familiar name brand. Last week they ran a 2/$5 special that sold out; by yesterday they had restocked, still at the sale price.

This little experience demonstrates the power we have as consumers. Clearly, we aren't the only consumers interested in alternatives to dairy products, and the industry is paying attention. If we ask - and keep asking - for unprocessed pig fat to render into lard, the merchants will supply unprocessed pig fat. If we insist on real food, the market will give us what we want, because above all, the market wants our business.

Who is to blame for the horrendous system of industrial agriculture in our nation? Certainly plenty of blame lies with multinational corporations who view living creatures as products. Without question, blame lies with our government who failed miserably at its duty to protect us. But ultimately, the blame is our own, for blithely swallowing the tempter's bait, hook, line and sinker. We have been, literally, consumers, without any thought about what we suck down our gullet.

And look what we've done.

Watch "Food, Inc."  Then think carefully about your choices.