Food Sleuth: Big Screen Can Have Big Effect on Attitude Toward Food

By Melinda Hemmelgarn

Columbia Daily Tribune

October 24, 2007

Available online at: http://www.columbiatribune.com/2007/Oct/20071024Food006.asp

Can watching a film change your diet, your weight and even the planet? Researchers at Rutgers University said movies can increase our knowledge while simultaneously appealing to our emotions - a powerful combination for changing behavior.

Dietitians Ellen Cottone and Carol Byrd-Bredbenner reported in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association that college students who viewed the film "Super Size Me" became more aware, empowered and likely to reduce their consumption of fast food. Not bad for watching a movie.

The authors concluded that "incorporation of ‘Super Size Me’ into weight-management interventions may substantially affect individual client outcomes and … ultimately lessen the impact of the obesity epidemic."

So it makes sense that the ADA’s hunger and environmental practice group chose to host a film festival last month at their annual meeting in Philadelphia. The films selected explored two troubling food and agriculture issues: factory farms and the ravages of large-scale, distant food production.

Film producer Jan Weber joined an expert panel of dietitian farmers to discuss how we can vote with our food dollars for a more sustainable food system.

Weber’s film "As We Sow" won best documentary at the Rural Route film festival in 2003 for putting a human face on Midwestern rural communities destroyed by corporate hog operations. She explained that her "intention is to place the factory farm next to the natural, humane farm and simply ask the question, ‘Which do you want to be the source of your food?’

"You don’t’ need to present horrific images to make the case," Weber said. "People will respond not so much against the factory farm as for the other." Her goal was to "present alternatives from whichpeople can make informed decisions about the food they buy and serve to their families." Farmers "have to know that there are alternatives to the factory model in which they can make a decent living doing the right thing."

After spending more than 100 hours filming on location, Weber confirmed that "industrialized farming is dehumanizing to those who engage in it and cruel to the animals who are part of it." However, she and other panelists agreed that the factory farm is the dominant source of our "cheap-food economy" that fuels obesity, pollutes air and water, and robs our children of a healthy future.

The second featured film, "Ripe for Change," produced by Jed Riffe of Berkeley, Calif., contrasted two parallel views of agriculture. One supports genetic engineering, chemical pesticides and large-scale farming; the other favors a more organic, holistic approach that considers agriculture’s effect on our environment, communities and farmworkers.

Alice Waters describes the pleasure of waiting to eat a cherished food until it’s naturally ripe in season. Peach farmer Mas Masumoto voices concern about a generation that might never know the taste of a real, fresh peach. And Tyrone Hayes, biologist at the University of California, warns us about water in the Midwest, so polluted with the herbicide Atrazine that frogs experience sexual mutation, with implications for human cancer.

Perhaps the most disturbing and revealing observation comes from Rich Rominger, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, who speaks about the unintentional spread of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs: "The genie’s out of the bottle."

If film has the power to raise awareness and change behavior, then let’s turn movies into movements. Use them to take back our food system, restore health and preserve democracy. Invite a few friends into your living room, butter some popcorn, pour cups of warm cider and let the shows begin.

Check out these sources: The Film Connection: www.filmconnection.org. Media Rights: www.mediathatmattersfest.org. Grace Factory Farm Project: www.factoryfarm.org.