Week 5

After reading the book Organic, Inc., I've been paying a lot more attention to labeling on the organic food I buy. Every truly organic product must be certified by the government (USDA), who contracts independent groups to do this certification. One independent, third party certification group that I've been noticing on a lot of labels is Quality Assurance International. I'm going to be looking more into them in the future, as their headquarters is located in San Diego. As I will be in LA this winter, I may take a day trip down there for interviews.

I've also been checking out the USDA website, which has a lot of information - including a list of both synthetic and non-synthetic ingredients stating which of these substances is or is not approved for organic food processing (the food contact substances I've been reading about). Pretty interesting, considering there are always substances getting approved or banned.

The book Food Politics has been pretty interesting, although a bit redundant and extremely dense. The author, Marion Nestle (whose real name is Paulette Goddard) is a professor of food health and nutrition at NYU, and in the 80's she was on many government health advisory boards and committees - so she really knows the U.S. food industry. Yet, because she took part in so much of this, she tends to go into intense detail about food certification, and things like the food pyramid.. which are interesting, but sometimes it's just too dense to comprehend. She also writes a lot about the lobbying system in regards to the food industry, and how pro-industry many government agencies tend to be. She refers often to the "revolving door" of officials who bounce from being heads of government agencies like the USDA to large corporations to being lobbyists (many of these are lawyers). She sights Micheal Taylor, the lawyer who has in the past been very involved with Monsanto, as well as the FDA, and other agencies. The film we screened on Tuesday, The Future of Food focuses on Monsanto (leading corporation in food biotechnology..) and mentions this political "revolving door", including Micheal Taylor. I'm beginning to make connections like this throughout my research, and it is definitely helping me narrow down the topics I want to cover in my film.

Food Politics has it's own blog as well, which is helping my research. As informative as this book is, especially in regards to political food systems (and all the corruption involved), it's all a bit of a headache. I don't know how much I will go into serious politics of food in the film, just because it's a very convoluted topic, but this is helping me narrow down the basics. I've been mostly just reading chapters that aid my research, and skipping over the redundant parts. One topic from the book I want to cover is the U.S. surplus of food and how this effects advertising. Essentially, we have TOO MUCH food in the U.S., thus there is an increase in advertising so consumers will keep buying more than they need - thus, the high rates of obesity, food waste, etc. Corporations get consumers to buy by lobbying.. they convince the FDA, USDA, and other government organizations (who are the main influences on public nutrition) that no food is "bad", and any food, no matter how processed, can be integrated into a healthy diet. The government then encourages the public, in ways like the food pyramid (which directly targets children and the undereducated), that eating a wide range of foods (and consuming MORE) is what will satisfy a healthy diet. The author gives a wide range of examples from advertising and corporate statements about the "nutritional benefits" of foods that I may consider quoting in the film. Also, I'm interested in spotlighting certain products in particular that have especially horrendous advertising campaigns, like GMO's (just a bit about biotechnology), Aspartame (which I've researched a good amount in the past already), and possibly something about the meat and dairy industry, or the hype about using margarine instead of butter.

My next read will probably be Food and Culture: A Reader, which is more of a global take on food "from perspectives of anthropology, history, psychology, philosophy, and sociology". Should be interesting.