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Posts Tagged Food Inc. movie

A Veggie-versary of Sorts

Jul 24

Posted by Shari B. in Vegetarian | 6 Comments

Hi friends!  Hope your weekend is already off to a great start.  My what a busy busy week it was.  So glad the weekend is here now!

One year ago today, July 24, my sweet hubby agreed to go see “Food, Inc.” with me and a couple of our friends.  I told him before we went in that I thought it might be something that would strongly affect me, but neither of us could have known the understatement those words would really  be.  And that the BBQ chicken sandwich I’d had at lunch that day would be that last time I’d be eating chicken, among other things!

It’s been a year chock full of veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, sprouts, fermented teas, and so much more with an occasional egg or piece of fish or a little raw goat cheese here and there.  What a wild and adventurous ride it has been so far!  I have tried foods that I would never have even considered before or known about if I hadn’t needed to “find an alternative” for our typical meals, especially when eating out.

Like some of these awesome eats…

Delicious Vegetarian Enchiladas with Carrot Puree at Tres Margaritas:

Beautiful Berkeley Vegan Pizza from ZPizza (where I also discovered dairy free Daiya cheese!)

Fabulous Falafel and Hummus Plate at Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill:

Tasty Three Beet Salad at Root Down:

The best Quinoa dish I’ve ever eaten (at Boulder Organic Pizza):

And that’s just a few!  I could go on all day (but then I might start drooling on my laptop…!)

My tastebuds definitely thank me for the change I’ve made!  If I’d still been eating meat when visiting the restaurants above, I would never have even known about these delicious dishes.

Yesterday I decided to pay it forward, so to speak, by giving the DVD to a coworker who seems close to making similar changes.  I hope he finds it just as life-changing as I did, especially in the culinary sense.

Am I trying to change people’s minds or get them to give up meat?  Not at all.  I just want people who are considering cutting back on meat and animal products to see that when it comes to the question of “but what’s left to eat if I don’t eat meat?” the answer is “a heck of a lot of fun foods!”

I’m looking forward to what the next year will bring!

– Shari B. =)

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If you’d like to read more on how I eat, you might enjoy these previous posts:

Shari Becht is a Fit Living Coach and an ACE Certified Personal Trainer offering coaching services to people across the U.S.  She is extremely passionate about teaching her clients how to start making small changes every day to their own lives, built around steps customized to fit their needs.

If you or someone you know could benefit from Shari’s coaching, please feel free to email her at shari [at] fitfeat  [dot] com.  For more information, click here.

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Vegetarian Points to Ponder

Nov 30

Posted by Shari B. in Vegetarian | 5 Comments

Hello there blog buds!

Recently, one of my Facebook friends posted a link to an article from the NY Daily News about how becoming a vegetarian can help save the planet.  (Thanks Sonya!)  It was a quick read and an interesting article so I thought I’d share it in case any of you are interested.  I’m not fully vegetarian (yet), since I do eat the occasional piece of tuna, salmon or shrimp — I guess that makes me a “pescatarian”.  But I’ll be honest here:  the more I read up on the topic, the faster I think I’m headed toward full-fledged vegetarian, and possibly vegan at some point.  Not too long ago, I received an email from a friend and reader who asked if I’d commented somewhere on the blog about why I don’t eat meat anymore.  So I figured this would be a good time to touch on it.

There were a number of reasons that propelled me to give up meat (excluding fish):  digestion troubles, studies linking consumption of animal protein to disease, animal treatment, and environmental impact of factory farming were the big ones.  I had been headed in this direction but the movie Food, Inc. was what ultimately pushed me off the fence. 

I’m not writing this post in an effort to change anyone’s mind by any means.  As I’ve stated in the past, we are each on our own journey and will find what is right for us in our OWN time.  But what I would like is for each person to consider their own health and wellness, and spend some time on educating oneself with further reading.

One book that I find to have a very down-to-earth perspective is written by Mark Bittman, called Food Matters:  A Guide to Conscious Eating.  What I respect about Mr. Bittman is that he isn’t asking people to give up meat completely.  He’s not a vegetarian.  But he does write about the impact the meat-packing industry has on the environment.  So he only eats meat with dinner.  Anything before that is vegetarian.  Here are two quotes from the first chapter of Food Matters:

“60 billion animals are raised each year for food - ten animals for every human on earth.   The projection is that just to sustain current consumption levels, by 2050 we’ll be raising 120 billion animals a year…  Even if we could find the space to meet the demand, the number also assumes the atmosphere, land, and oceans could tolerate it.”

“The only way to reduce factory farming is to demand less meat.”

“…meat consumption would have to fall to about three ounces a day just to stabilizes the amount of greenhouse gases produced by raising livestock.  And stabilizing production isn’t going to cut it, since even at current levels global warming is deadly.”

I also happened upon a book called The Rave Diet by Mike Anderson while I was at the library on Friday.  I took it home with me and made an initial scan-through and am now going back to look more in depth.  It’s definitely a stricter program than I follow now, but the author does include plenty of references and resources.  I also saw that he has a documentary called Eating.  Well wouldn’t you know that while I was channel-surfing Friday night, our local PBS station was showing that documentary!  (Talk about cueing up the Twilight Zone theme right there…)  While the documentary appears somewhat low-budget, the message really hits home about moving to plant-based nutrition.  One fine point made in the show is regarding cancer:  the only actual CURE for cancer we have right now is our own immune system.   That makes me want to take even better care of my immune system NOW.  I am terrified of cancer TREATMENTS.   I’ve recorded Eating and am about halfway through.  What I’ve seen so far is very compelling and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest. 

Like Bittman, Mr. Anderson covers the impact on the environment in Eating.  For example, the average American uses 106 gallons of water per day for our domestic activity.  If that same average American ingests just ONE quarter-pound fast-food burger they have upped their usage to 3,106 because it took an extra 3,000 gallons of water for the 1/4 lb worth of that cow to be raised and processed.

Here are some of his bullet points:

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Basically, to answer the question posed to me about eating meat, I’d arrived at a point where (personally) I felt there were enough questionable issues with consuming meat that the RISKS began to outweigh any BENEFITS. 

Today’s discussion:  What book/movie made an impact on you at some point and caused you to make a change?  (Whether fitness related, diet, green living, etc.)

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Which brings me to my PLANT-BASED eats for Sunday!  ;)

Mmmm…. mango tango breakfast!

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A very ugly brown (but SUPER tasty) green smoothie (acai smoothie pack, 2 fists full of spinach, 2 stalks celery, 1/2 large cucumber, 2 tsp white chia seeds, handful of sprouts, 1 pear. Ppurple ACAI + green SPINACH = not so pretty photo!

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Lunch was out at Tokyo Joe’s:  tofu + brown rice, with mushrooms, long beans, zucchini, broccoli and snow peas with curry sauce on the side.   Half of this bowl came home in a doggy bag!

tj

Soup-n-sandwich dinner:  pita with tomato, cucumber and avocado, with leftover squash soup.  I am still SO in love with this soup!img 896

And an after-dinner herbal drink compliments of Cindy (who included some fun new teas for me to try when she mailed my beautiful scarf!)  Cindy, that is a GREAT tea flavor – I’ve already added it to my grocery list!  Thanks for sharing!

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We had a wonderful (and brisk) 2.5 mile sunset walk with the dogs which capped off the weekend perfectly! 

Does it really have to be Monday?  I’d love to rewind back to Wednesday night and enjoy this holiday weekend all over again!

– Shari B. =)

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Why You Should See “Food, Inc.”

Nov 11

Posted by Shari B. in Pescatarian, Vegetarian | 3 Comments

Hi blog buds!

It’s Wednesday!  Happy Humpday!  I’m becoming more fond of Wednesdays now thanks to ABC’s “Modern Family” — which means we get 30 minutes of cracking up.  MSP and I love that show!  I hope it’s one of the new shows that actually stays on TV this season.

So…. lookie what I picked up:

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For some reason I thought buying a sprouting jar was going to be pricey, so I never looked for one.  But I happened to find this one for only $4 and change at the local Vitamin Cottage!  Wahoo!  And a small baggie of some organic mixed seeds for sprouting.  It has some fenugreek, mung, sunflower in it, plus some others that I can’t think of at the moment!

My next step is to soak the seeds.  Maybe tonight.  :)   Baby steps.  I have some “Sprouting Intimidation” going on after the last attempt at sprouting millet. 

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes this time.  If I can’t grow sprouts in a jar made specifically for sprouting using seeds labeled specifically for sprouting, I’ll know that I (specifically) am not meant to grow sprouts! 

Sadly I don’t have much for you in the way of Feats & Eats for yesterday like I normally do.  A certain little pupster (Rascal) decided to inhale something at 2:00 AM Tuesday morning.  That dog has THE most sensitive nose.  He sneezes if I put on hand lotion.  He usually goes out to tinkle around 2:00 (thank goodness for doggy doors) and must have been sniffing around  and breathed something in because when he came back in he had the Neverending Attack of the Sneezes.  Then he’d breathe funny.  Another sneeze fit.  Wheeze a little.   At that point, I was wide awake – for the rest of the night.

Needless to say, it was an unproductive day on the exercise front.  Outside of running errands and writing the blog, I was pretty much useless.  I don’t know how new parents function on little to no sleep.  I spent 2 years struggling with chronic intermittent insomnia which was finally resolved in April of this year.  I’ve been sleeping so great now that I must have forgotten how hard it is to get through the next day after very little sleep.  I didn’t even make a green smoothie yesterday!!  And luckily MSP had leftover dinner from the night before. 

I did get a lot of book reading done though, thanks to our cable modem being down 2/3 of the day.  :)   MSP and I commented last night on just how addicted to the internet we actually are.  Being forced to “unplug” for even part of a day seemed to induce anxiety and shaky hands!  ;)    

Looking at the silver lining, I was able to enjoy a wonderfully relaxing day.  So it just made sense that this morning’s workout should be a good hour of Iron Yoga to keep that ZEN going.  After which I took each of the dogs on their own wog, so I got about in about 30 minutes per dog. 

I can already tell my shoulders will be sore tomorrow - I like combining the small weights with the yoga. 

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Thanks everone for the great book suggestions you gave me in response to yesterday’s post.  I appreciate it!   I’ll return the favor by recommending a DVD for you to watch.

food inc

Food, Inc. was recently released on DVD (wahoo!)  This documentary sheds a lot of light on how our food supply has become BIG BUSINESS and the affect it has had on small farmers, obesity, disease, meatpacking employees, treatment of animals, etc.  It discusses how much of our food supply is genetically modified (engineered) not only for things like ‘bigger better tomatoes’ but to be PEST-RESISTANT.  Not to mention the fact that we could be consuming meat from CLONED animals and not even know it.   Check out the issues with industrialized food at the Food, Inc. website.  Or read about the 10 Things You Can Do to Change our Food System.  

I could ramble on about the issues covered in this movie, but I think you’d get more out of it if you check it out for yourself.  If you are familiar with Michael Pollan who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, you will enjoy that he is featured in the film. 

One of the biggest points MSP and I took away from watching this film back in July was that every time we make a purchase, it is a VOTE.  If we purchase local organic products it is our VOTE on behalf of those products.  The more we support organic and/or local products, the more mainstream they will become.  It has definitely made an impact on our shopping choices.  We are now happier to spend a little more for organic food because we want to support those companies.  And minimize our purchase of (read: vote against) industrialized food when we can.

Here’s the movie trailer – I guarantee it will pique your interest!

You can bet that I have the DVD even though I’ve already seen it in the theater. 

Today’s discussion: 

Have you seen Food, Inc.?  What were your thoughts after seeing it?  Did it change the way you shop or eat?

Let’s talk about it!  Drop a comment!

– Shari B. =)

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