Day 17 of the 30-Day Challenge: Procrastination Station
Task: To watch a food documentary on Netflix, regarding health and diet.
Reason for Task: My family and I welcome opportunities to enhance our understanding of what it takes to assume a healthy eating lifestyle. And in pursuit of such knowledge, my family and I will occasionally seek assistance from the thought-provoking offerings that Netflix provides. The last food documentary I watched on Netflix, What the Health, was quite some time ago and I’m overdue for some dietary enrichment. Historically, I’ve found the documentaries that I’ve viewed to be very informative and quite impactful. Usually, they have been referred to me or a member of my family; and then, we’ve gone ahead and checked them out. However, I tried something different this time. I just went to Netflix and did a search for “food documentaries” and the one that quickly stood out to me was In Defense of Food. By looking at the title and reading the brief description, I was immediately intrigued and thought I’d settle in for an hour and 55 minutes of food for thought.
Duration of Task: 1 day.
Outcome: As I got into it, I noted that, although there are many collaborators that contributed to this film, Michael Pollan (journalist, author, professor, and lecturer) provided the enlightening commentary and gives the backbone to this documentary. I can’t begin to give you a detailed summary of the film in a few short paragraphs, so I thought I’d give you a list of some major themes that were covered such as:
- The Western Diet
- Health conditions linked to diet
- The effects of agriculture on the diet
- The scarcity of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the diet and what foods you can find them in
- The Food Industry’s Role regarding processed foods
- Vitamin-enriched foods
- Sugar
- Cholesterol
- Fats
- The ideology of Nutritionism
- How culture affects the diet
- Overall theme of film that sums up how to eat in a healthy way: (Eat food, not too much, mostly plants)
- Edible food-like substances (processed foods)
- The study of the human mother’s breast milk and how it nourishes the baby
- Correlation of diseases in poor and minority communities and the marketing and high sales of unhealthy foods to these populations
- Michael Pollan’s Food Rules such as 1) eating things that will eventually rot, 2) eating only foods that have been cooked by humans, and 3) avoiding foods you see advertised on tv
- Human interest projects involving youth and growing fresh food
I was the only one that viewed the documentary today, but I will be sharing it with my family in the very near future. There were definitely things that I already knew from the film but a few that I didn’t. I always find some take-aways from these food documentaries, and In Defense of Food was no exception.
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