Cherie ’s free - range broiler chickens roamhappily around the farm .
I really need to be more careful what I watch before bedtime .
Of course , I ( usually ) know intimately than to consider a terrifying film likeParanormal Activityright before ferment in , but who would have thought a mere documentary film about food for thought and farming could make me rest awake at dark , simmering with anger and disgust ?
Make that two infotainment .
This month I inveigle my married man into watchingFood , Inc.(2008 ) , an fantabulous — if profoundly disturbing — documentary film that explore the hidden world of our industrial food diligence , andThe Future of Food(2004 ) , another fine ( and disgraceful ) documentary that study genetically engineered foods , semen patenting and the corporization of our food supplying .
Watching these flick , I keep thinking about one of my favorite skill fabrication motion-picture show , The Matrix , and the scene where Morpheus distinguish Neo he has a pick between taking the crimson birth control pill , which will show him the ugly truth about the Matrix , and the blue pill , which will allow him to keep living the lie .
Sadly , when it comes to our nutrient , I opine most of us here in the U.S. hold out in a kind of Matrix , believe — or pretending — that the conventional crybaby substance we eat up come from well-chosen birds on a bucolic farm rather than from suffering creatures packed like sardines inside immense closed barns ( if we take in it comes from a veridical live volaille at all ) .
Or that the Zea mays , strawberries and other conventionally - grown crops we devour are wholesome foods nurtured on scenic family homesteads rather than develop in Brobdingnagian , corporate - owned and chemical substance - inundated monocultures .
As a hobby Fannie Merritt Farmer and farm writer who has read quite a morsel about industrial farming , I sense like I ’m half in and half out of the Matrix . Still , witnessing the awfully inhumane conditions within an industrial broiler barn inFood , Inc. , and seeing the hurting and fatigue written on the side of a farmer action by corporate agri - heavyweight Monsanto for patent of invention violation inThe Future of Foodmade me feel much like Nero did after he take the ruby-red tab and saw the Matrix for what it was .
Sick to my stomach .
By the style , I knew this Matrix metaphor was too apt not to have been used before , and for sure enough , I just found and keep an eye on a little animated spoof , calledThe Meatrix(2003 ) , made to educate people about factory farming and motivate alteration .
So what about you ? Will you take the blue pill or the red anovulant ?
Me , I ca n’t wait to get my heirloom come in the earth , hit my local Fannie Merritt Farmer ’s food market when it open , and upraise my next good deal of content , free - kitchen range chickens .
~ Cherie
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