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Sunday, June 14, 2009

A Fresh Take

I'm never quite how to review a documentary, or even if I should 'review' one at all. The purpose of 'traditional' movies is to entertain (using the broadest sense of the word). If you end up learning something or thinking about the world after the movie, well that's just a bonus. The purpose of a documentary is to learn. If you end up being entertained in the process then that's just a bonus. The documentary Fresh may not be traditionally entertaining, but it certainly is interesting.
The movie is about how we get our food. The short answer is that most food we eat comes from giant factories designed to produce one type of food. It examines this way of cultivating food and compares it to a more organic approach. You're probably not surprised to hear that the organic approach is better.
Now, some of you may know me to be a vegetarian. So I should note that this is not an anti-meat film. In fact, this documentary makes no assessment at all about the morality of meat. Like-wise, this movie does not resort to gross-out tactics such as showing the inside of a slaughterhouse or anything like that. This movie is solely focused on the advantages to multi-cultured, organic farming opposed to the mono-culture 'big box' food factories. The main crux of the film is that we are currently fighting nature in the production of our food as opposed to letting nature work for us. It seems so obvious once you think about it.
The end conclusion of this documentary isn't surprising. I suppose I'd compare it to Supersize Me. Everybody already knew McDonald's food is bad for you. The surprising part came in just HOW bad McDonald's food is for you.
Likewise, the conclusion of Fresh isn't surprising. The surprise comes from the unsustainability of the way most food is produced and in just how much better organic food is, and not just health wise, but economically speaking and environmentally speaking.
So, if you're ready to really think about where your food comes from and why that's important in the first place, then I'd suggest checking out the documentary Fresh.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds good. Will add it to my Queue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. baroness van bitzenhoferJune 14, 2009 at 12:21 PM

    P.S. We own it in case anyone wants to borrow it! I think they're currently only selling it at the showings, and it's already been shown in the cities.

    ReplyDelete

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