Food-themed Film Series Goes Nationwide in April

By Julie Leibach
Reporter, Audubon Magazine
Published April 01, 2010

Specialty Studios/Ripple Effect

We are what we eat, right? Considering the nation’s seemingly insatiable appetite for junk food, the adage conjures some gastro-trocious images. I picture a mutant human-victual hybrid: Homo sapiens head, grisly hamburger meat body, lumbering on fried mozzarella stick legs, sweating corn syrup. In fact, new research published online a few days ago in Nature Neuroscience suggests that regularly gorging on junk food can become an addictive habit in the same way that doing drugs can. And then there’s the toll that producing some of our favorite guilty pleasures can take on the planet.

But it tastes so good! You say. And I don’t know what food is best for the environment anyway! Well, get educated this month by going to a movie (you can exercise afterward).

 
Throughout April, a variety of food-related films will be screening in states across the country as part of Whole Foods Markets' nationwide campaign, “Let’s Retake Our Plates.” The idea is that “the selected films will spark change through awareness, understanding and discussion of how today's food choices affect the environment, people's health and the future of food,” according to a press release.
 
The flicks include the Academy Award® Nominee for Best Documentary Feature film, Food, Inc. (see Audubon's review here), as well as No Impact Man (see our review here), among others (view local listings). Next week I’ll review Fresh, whose April 7th Green Carpet premiere screening in New York is organized around several citywide food-themed workshops and demonstrations slated for the next two weeks (sign up here). 
 
In light of the recent Nature Neuroscience results about the mental power of chow, not to mention industrial agriculture’s environmental offenses, doesn’t now seem like a great time to retake our plates, before our fast food addictions take over our lives?