| Last week I attended a screening of the excellent new movie Food Fight. This documentary recounts the rise of our industrial food system after World War II, along with countervailing efforts to keep our food safe, local, and tasting good!
The star of the film is the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, and its founder and owner Alice Waters. During the riotous Sixties, she was appalled by the poor diets of her fellow protestors, and started the restaurant to provide high quality food in a "dinner party" environment. Over time she developed her own sources of local and organic food, avoiding more commercial sources in an effort to provide the most delicious food possible.
A number of other chefs are interviewed, including Wolfgang Puck and Ann Cooper (recently described here). The rise of farmers markets in many cities, as a source of local fruit, vegetables, et al. for both restaurants and individuals, is also an important story line.
Several organic farmers make an appearance, and describe their struggles to do more than produce low-cost and high-calorie commodity food stuffs. Some time is also spent recounting recent attempts to reform U.S. agriculture, focusing on Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI/La Crosse).
The movie also documents the efforts of MacArthur Fellow Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee, and his daughter Alice in Chicago, to provide good-quality, low-cost food to the residents of inner city neighborhoods with few options besides the local mini-mart full of junk food and fast-food restaurants. The new wave of schools growing their own gardens is also highlighted.
Other interviewees describing the big picture include Michael Pollan of Omnivore's Dilemma fame, and academic Marion Nestle.
All in all, Food Fight is a thoroughly enjoyable film that uses humor to chronicle the absurdity of our food system and emphasizes the slow but revolutionary changes taking place at its margins. My one complaint about the film is that it completely ignores the parallel rise of food cooperatives as a source of good, whole, organic, and local food, an important complement to farmers markets in both availability and necessary staples such as grains. The same rebellious spirit embodied by Alice Waters gave rise to hundreds of small co-ops across the country, so I was quite surprised that they were not even mentioned. It seems that even they are still on the periphery in some parts of our alternative food economy.
Food Fight has been making the rounds of various film festivals, but will receive its theatrical debut on March 24 in Los Angeles, and will hopefully follow soon at a theater near you. |
