Food Inc. -- Frightening and Insightful

I've been searching, over the past month or so, for a topic that I wanted to use as an entry point back into this blog. Last night, about half way through the movie Food Inc., I knew that I had found it. Judging by the dozen or so people who also attended this showing, most of us would rather be out spending money we don't really have on a good meal rather than in a theater watching a movie that will ruin any appetite. But to all of you who did go out last night, and even those who stayed in for a home cooked meal, do you know where the food on your plate came from? And I mean before you picked it up off a shelf at Safeway, or, God forbid, Walmart. I will be perfectly honest and say that I have absolutely no idea where any of the things in my kitchen were grown or processed. I don't know anything about the companies or their practices that get food to my table. But now, I know that the time for finding out is more than overdue.

I would like to discuss this topic in several segments because it is so expansive. Food itself can be divided between things that are grown, raised, and caught. What used to be left to independent family farmers has been overtaken by a few extremely powerful multinational corporations. This process is highly controlled, from seed to shipping, and is linked closely to industrialization, mechanization, specialization and globalization. Governmental organizations exist, to some extent, to regulate our food. Very few people in the world are left untouched by this phenomenon. Each player, from individual consumer to pig farmer to CEO to your state Senator, impacts the future of our food.

This is just an introduction. After doing a bit more research I would like to delve in to the plants that are grown in the US (mainly corn): how they're grown, what they're used for and how this impacts the rest of the globe.