family food

Apparently my food theme is continuing. I guess because it's new to me and I think it's a good thing to talk about...

Anyway, I promise I don't normally spend Saturday nights at home with my family in my parents' family room. But my sister and I had plans to go camping with our best friends, which fell through on Thursday. (Said best friends had to bail.) So I'm sitting down with my mom, dad, brother and sister to make them watch Food, Inc.

This 2008 documentary explores the sources of our food and the people that work in the factories. Most of it does center around meat, but the film also discusses the history of factories and the economic effects and implications of how our food is created.

I sat down to watch this on Thursday with my friend Brenda, who is also a vegetarian. We munched on our Indian veggie meals while thanking God that there was no beef, pork, or chicken in our food. After I finished, I was slightly bummed to realize that I couldn't just return it to the library like I wanted to. I knew my family had to watch it, but I wondered about my dad's reaction. He loves to acquire new knowledge, but he equally loves conservative politics and hamburgers. If you can combine them both for him, all the better. Fortunately, my uncle had recommended Food, Inc. to him so he is all for it. We are currently about 45 minutes into it, and he says he is intrigued. (He has to stop now to go watch the Ravens get some Skins.

I'm kind of okay with pausing the movie to let him and my brother go downstairs. It started a conversation about what we could do as a family to eat better, which I'm all for! Secretly I'm hoping it will push my mom and sister to vegetarianism...they're somewhat close. My dad is throwing out ideas about getting a large freezer in our garage to store locally grown meat and produce. (I would be more excited, but I'll believe it when I see it. We need to have further conversation about this.)

My brother, J, is currently the hardest sell. Who can blame him? The kid is 14, and perfectly content to be ignorant to what's in his food. He doesn't want to work harder, and his youth and metabolism prevent him from having health issues or weight issues that would inspire him to eat better. In his eyes, everything is fine, and his crazy hippie sister coming back from the DR with all these new ideas about food is not sitting well with him.

My mom's been sick for over a week now, and when she gets sick she's kind of out of it, so it's hard to see what her reaction is. As a general rule she doesn't eat red meat, and a few weeks ago after I read her a chapter out of Eating Animals she didn't eat the chicken she had made for dinner. She tries to eat healthy anyway for her health, BUT since my dad doesn't consider it dinner unless it has meat, what she cooks usually contains ground turkey. (She also does turkey bacon and turkey hot dogs instead of beef.) She doesn't like cooking, so she'll go ahead and eat whatever she's made for her dad. I think she would be an easy convert if my dad could be convinced.

As for my sister, I think she's starting to try eating differently. I like to feel like she's not eating meat with me, but she's not quite there yet. We'll see what happens.

What's next? My dad has promised to finish the film tomorrow, and I'm hoping he'll make J watch too. I'm excited to see what kind of dialogue this sparks amidst the fam.

If you're reading this and you're from my county, I highly recommend checking Food, Inc. out of the library. If you're not from the area, I would check your local library anyway!

I have a few more thoughts on food, so they'll probably show up here in the next week or so...