Today I watched Food, inc. It’s a documentary about the food industry—more specifically about the dangers of the industrialization of the food industry.

In Brief

Food, inc. was good. It was entertaining and compelling without being too preachy. In fact, exactly what they were preaching was even a bit ambiguous (I mean, they cast Walmart in a positive light!). They did a good job of not being completely biased. Food, inc is a movie that I think all Americans should see, whether they agree or disagree.

In Full

Food is an incredibly intimate part of our lives. There isn’t anything else that we literally take and make a part of our very bodies. Where our food comes from deserves our attention and consideration. All of life is a matter of risk analysis, but the major food industry would like its consumers to believe that our decision making is risk free. It is personally irresponsible for us not to weigh out our risks when making our choices and it’s even more dubious for an industry to deliberately get in the way of that.

For me, I found Food to be really compelling—and convincing. The major companies dominating the food industry are too big and their pockets too deep not to fall under scrutiny.

We’re not talking about products we use to vacuum our floors, or get us to work. We’re talking about products we literally consume and digest. These are products which ought to be handled and produced with the utmost of care and concern for where exactly they will end up.

Food, inc was divided up into eight or nine short segments dealing with the major problems/dangers of our current food industry. From cattle sanitation, poultry production, employee treatment, corn, soy and more.

Now, I’m not among those who think that biological engineering is necessarily a bad thing in food production. Or even that chemical intervention is necessarily a bad thing. But only when done responsibly and with a real and honest concern for the people who will be consuming the food. Food, inc went a long way, I think, to reveal that this is not the practice of these corporations. Perhaps this scale of food production is too new for the problems to have worked themselves out. But we don’t need to way another 100 years for that to happen.

Food, inc also highlighted the major problems with employee treatment. Many of the ground floor employees are illegal immigrants. Rather than the companies being raided for their hiring practices, they’re sheltered from that devastation by turning over the individuals who pay personally. Illegal immigration is a big problem and these companies are making it much worse.

Food, inc delved into the topic of corn and soy subsidies. It told of how our subsidies are increasing foreign poverty by taking away local farmer’s abilities to grow crops for themselves. They also have the affect of creating a dangerous imbalance in food availability. Two hundred years ago, the wealthy were plump and fat. Today, the poor are overweight. Because the cheapest food is all made from subsidized crops. And none of it is especially good for us.

There’s no doubt that Food, inc has some propaganda-like elements, and so it should be watched discerningly. However, we would be fools to disregard it because it isn’t purely unbiased. (after all, what is?). There are facts floating around out there and they will matter to us one day, whether we consider them today or not. And they will matter to our children.

I think we would be wise to carefully consider and research the claims made in Food, inc and decide for ourselves whether the risk is right for us or not.

I’m not big on the cliché of New Years resolutions. I almost feel like setting something up as a New Years resolution is kind of sealing your fate before you even begin.

However, my compulsive nature loves the idea of attempting something I want to do in nice even increments. For example setting my mind to do something from January 1st through December 31st. An even 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,5… ok, so maybe not even number increments. But in our time measurement, it’s satisfyingly complete.

So, this year, I’m going to attempt to take advantage of the nice even time increments and I’m going to attempt to accomplish something for myself.

Vegetarianism… sort of.

Yeah, you read it right. I’m going to attempt to be a vegetarian in the year 2010. While I’m not crazy about the way the food industry goes about acquiring meat, to some people’s dismay, animal treatment has nothing to do with my vegetarian endeavor. And, in the traditional sense of the word, I’m what most vegetarians would consider a poser. I’m alright with that.

I will be cutting out chicken, beef and pork in it’s whole form from my diet. What does that mean? It means I’ll still be eating fish (and some seafood), dairy, eggs and broths. With such a lax form of vegetarianism you might wonder why I’d decide to do it in the first place.

1. Health. Not that eating meat is particularly unhealthy, but the portions I choose, and are often offered to me, are unreasonable. And, being that I am an all-or-nothing kind of guy, I will have far more difficulty ordering a three piece chicken strips meal, than simply not ordering them at all.

2. Discipline. I believe discipline is contagious. Being disciplined in one area helps develop disciplines in other areas. I have had great success in my discipline of scripture study, but very poor discipline in areas of food consumption and exercise. Being that I’m getting older and my metabolism is no longer on my side, my eating habits must change. I foresee that a clear, across-the-board discipline in my eating habits is likely to stabilize the way I choose to eat.

3. Health, again. Having a specific set of ingredients that I choose not to eat will also force me to think more carefully about what I’m about to consume. This forethought is likely to have positive effects on the kinds of food I choose to eat in general. (i.e., fewer things from fast-food restaurants).

Video Blogging

This one is admittedly a bit more ambiguous in it’s intention.

For over two years now I have been blogging every day on topics that I find meaningful. Some of my posts have had more of my heart in them than others. But, the practice and the discipline has been good for me in a lot of different ways. This year, I intend to add video blogging to that regimen.

The plan, at least initially, will be to publish a new video each weekend in 2010. Thus far, the topics are unknown. The format is unknown. Just about everything is unknown. In fact, initially, It may just be me in front of my MacBook. This is all yet to be seen.

This is probably another resolve one might scratch their head at.

1. Unmet dreams. Call it a cliché,  but there are quite a lot of things that are very close my my heart, which I have failed yet to achieve. In fact, for various reason, I have failed to even pursue them. While video blogging on YouTube isn’t really even close to where I want to be, it is within the genre. I owe it to myself to do something and video blogging seems to be the most financially and personally accessible at the moment.

2. Hope. Much of the reason I have yet failed to pursue my true passions is a disillusionment with my own abilities and a fear of failing at my endeavors. By making a decision to do something, however simple it may be, I bolster hope that I might one day get to where I want to be.

In Conclusion.

With discipline, persistence, and of course, God’s grace, I hope to become a better person in 2010. Not only in a spiritual and social sense, but in my health and personal endeavors. I think these two resolves will help pave the way to seeing that hope realized.

I find a certain joy in poking fun at our American culture of over doing, well, pretty much everything. Too much eating. Too much spending. Too much playing. Too much working. Really, very little is done in moderation here in America.

We have this habit of taking a good thing to destructive excess. We become obese from too much eating. Families are estranged from too much working. Financial security and opportunity is destroyed by too much spending. Responsibility is forgotten with too much playing.

While these things in and of themselves are (usually) not expressly condemned, they seem to become our disaster.

Again, from Thomas Watson’s insight and wisdom:

More are hurt by lawful things than unlawful, as more are killed with wine than poison. Gross sins are affright, but how many take a surfeit the state (of being more than full) and die, in using lawful things inordinately. Recreation is lawful, eating and drinking are lawful, but many offend by excess and their table is a snare. Relations are lawful, but how often does Satan tempt to overlove! How often is the wife and child laid in God’s room! Excess makes things lawful become sinful.

In Have you ever read Romans 14:13? It goes like this:

“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother”

I think I hear this verse (and others like it) way too often. It’s usually used as kind of a blanket verse. A trump card to avoid tense situations. Billy is drinking a beer and Betty thinks it’s wrong. Rather than Billy and Betty having to deal with the tension of holding differing convictions, it’s argued that Billy shouldn’t drink beer because it’s causing Betty to ‘stumble’.

Is it? Or is her sense of right and wrong taking offense at Billy’s differing opinion? They’re not the same thing.

Admittedly, this is not a topic that I have thoroughly thought through. There are still quite a few questions and points of contention in my mind over it. But the overarching issue, I think, is relatively clear.

Consider the verse, Proverbs 27:17:

Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.

Is it possible for iron to sharpen iron without friction? No, of course not. Friction is more or less why iron can sharpen iron. Likewise, I can’t think of too many times that a brother refined me apart from my own convictions rubbing against theirs. For us to benefit from one another as believers, our sense of right and wrong must be offended some times.

In Romans 14, Paul does not want to cause a brother to stumble by eating meat. After all, many of his Jewish brothers would be violating their conscience by eating meat. But eventually, they did eat meat. There are very few Christians today who refrain from eating meat for biblical reasons. How’d this happen? At some point someone’s convictions must have been offended causing them to reconsider their resolves, ultimately allowing them to change their views and eat meat with a clean conscience.

In the situation with Billy and Betty, Billy shouldn’t entice Betty to drink beer, nor should he drink beer if Betty is feeling the urge to do so—thus violating her conscience. However, I don’t think Billy has much obligation to Betty’s preferences beyond that.

If we allow the definitions of ‘stumbling block’ and ‘offended’ and ‘conscience’ to be convoluted, then we’ll be restricted from just about everything. There aren’t many topics that Christians unanimously agree on and how specifically to live this life is far far far from being on that list. That’s okay. But it means that topics like this one shouldn’t be carelessly understood and hidden behind.

It usually results in more irritated conflict and threatens to stunt our spiritual and relational growth.