(Download EAT ME, for free, today!)

If you’ve read Michael Pollan and you’ve seen FOOD, INC., chances are you’re not super-sizing your meals or expecting to find a movie-marketing doo-dad in your lunchbox.

However, chances are you still have many friends and family members convinced “organic” is just a Madison Avenue buzzword to bilk city-slickers out of a few extra bucks. And, sometimes they’re right. Nevertheless, these folks remain transfixed with trans-fats, stuffing themselves with “food-like substances” that have shelf lives longer than the halflife of Plutonium 239. My mantra: if it won’t rot, don’t eat it.

So, how do we introduce the issues surrounding organic food and farming? Consider this: EAT ME. That’s the title of The Warren Report’s half-hour special showcasing the documentary, THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN as well as interviews with the movie’s eponymous subject, author Nina Planck (Real Food: What to Eat and Why) and Colin McCrate, founder of The Seattle Urban Farm Company. Together, they use facts, fun and implosion therapy to get me over my fear of dirt and my melon-picking ignorance.

Watch the entire show, EAT ME, for yourself, for FREE, on-line now — via iTunes, Libsyn or The Warren Report. Then, share with friends who still believe the tip of the food pyramid is comprised of Ding Dongs and Pixy Stix.

Bon appetit!

Participant Media‘s FOOD, INC. takes an encyclopedic approach, cataloguing all the ills of Big Ag. THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN makes it personal, tracking the career path of America’s most unorthodox, organic champion. Chris Taylor‘s FOOD FIGHT is less combative than its title suggests, quickly itemizing the decline of our country’s dietary standards in order to focus on the “revolution” born in Berkeley and now responsible for the abundance of farmers markets in major metropolises and heirloom tomatoes on foodies’ lips.

FOOD FIGHT features omnipresent omnivore Michael Pollan, celebrity pizza-maker Wolfgang Puck and activist/restauranteur Alice Waters among a bushel of other  toque-inged heads dishing about the military industrial complex, carbohydrates and California cuisine. They all agree: post-war efforts to mass produce meals and reduce dependence on household  help increased efficiency while eliminating almost every element of taste, developing a nation of ignorant shoppers with bland palates and bulging waistlines. They all agree: locally-grown foods top corn-bloated food-like substances. And, unless, you are a self-loathing, slow-witted, fast-food-raised diabetic you simply won’t argue the benefits of reversing 4o years of Earl Butz‘s failed farm policy that favors profit over flavor, aimless fecundity over sensible food security.

On screen, FOOD FIGHT knocks out its target, Big Ag, a  tomato can if ever there was one. Sadly, in real-life the match drags on. Big Ag’s a bruising student of the sweet science, using government subsidies, savvy marketing and rigged economics to lure consumers into a tragically unhealthy rope-a-dope gambit. They grow crap cheap, sell crap cheaper, wearing us down round by round, getting into our heads with their most literal taunt: Eat shit and die. 

So, what are you going to do? Take the one-way ticket to Palookaville? Or, change your habits, change your diet and rejoin the FOOD FIGHT?

Which would you rather eat?

a) a genetically-modified, patent-protected soybean increasingly devoid of nutrients that may put all family farmers out of business?

b) a hamburger comprised of dozens of the ground-down slaughtered carcasses of cattle — raised more cruelly than Augusten Burroughs, Christina Crawford and Antwone Fisher — and padded with an ammonia-cleansed filler of fat, gristle and trimmings?

c) your words?

FOOD, INC. poses this question indirectly, but it is the crux of the movie. If we truly are what we eat, shouldn’t we review our options a little more judiciously? And, shouldn’t we discuss our choices publicly before our Freedom of Speech is bought out by the very business interests that intend to limit them?

Robert Kenner‘s well-packaged documentary serves up the issues in a manner suited for mass consumption. The film covers all the inherent problems with our increasingly industrialized food chain from the main ingredient of chicken soup to Big Food’s litigious oppression of growers and consumers that’s just nuts. We learn that poultry-breeders are today’s indentured servants, seed-cleaners are tomorrow’s witches and grocery-shoppers are an endangered species… because food-like substances being marketed and sold to us are killing us slowly. (Think you’re healthier than your grandparents? Guess again. They didn’t stop thrice daily at the Yum-Yum Snack Shack for a Mega-Meal and Jug-o-Pop. Grandma and Grandpa also got out in the sun — to work! — once in a while.)

Authors Eric Shlosser and Michael Pollan have stated their convincing cases before — in Fast Food Nation and In Defense of Food, respectively. Here, they offer up their worries and warnings in bite-sized chunks that serve as a narrative backbone, along with pinches and dashes of like-minded mavericks such as Joel (Salad Bar Beef) Salatin of Polyface Farm and Gary (Stirring It Up) Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm. (The latter is a entrepreneurial champion of the commodification of the organic movement; the former, an authoritative advocate for the (re-)simplification of the food cycle. Bet he read Snip, Snap, Snurr and The Buttered Bread.) Naturally, the big cheeses of Big Food refuse to go on camera, on record. Consequently, it is the repressed testimony of Republican mom Barbara Kowalcyk that lifts and separates FOOD, INC. from the cornucopia of related documentaries. Having lost her 2-year-old son to an E. Coli outbreak in 2001, Ms. Kowalcyk now fights for food safety legislation despite the efforts of lobbyists and lawyers to shut her up. Sadly, these money-launderers and three-bit shysters have succeeded to a great extent. Congress has done little to protect the public. And, when pressed to explain how her own eating habits have changed since her son’s death, Ms. Kowalcyk zips her lips for fear of prosecution. (You’ve got to see it to bereave it.) Apparently, it’s okay for the food industry to kill kids with tainted burgers, yet it is not okay for to her to have it her way and speak her piece. Even Elise Pearlstein, the producer of FOOD, INC., shied away from talking about her diet, during our conversation, for fear of retaliation. Only Oprah is bold and wealthy enough to speak up… and shill out for a dream team of defense attorneys. But what good is the First Amendment if Free Speech is only available for purchase? What good is the FDA if its policing-powers are as morally-corrupted by conflicts of interest as Eliot Spitzer at a Hookers-For-Justice conference? What good is the federally-approved food pyramid if its corn-and-grain keystones serve only as building blocks for a fatter, not fitter, America?

FOOD, INC. frames the dilemma, offers multiple choices. THINK before you bite. Read Pollan, Schlosser and Salatin. Read Nina Planck‘s Real Food: What to Eat and Why, the best blend of the sense and science of nutrition. Better yet, visit a farm, not just your farmers’ market. If you’ve got kids, take ‘em. If you’ve got fists, shake ‘em… at Tyson, Perdue, Monsanto and so many more. Remind yourself where your meals come from before saying grace. Not everything that lands on our plates is worth being thankful for, but by changing your shopping habits, you can ensure you are blessed. Think global, eat local.

(For more information on food issues, purchase a copy of The Warren Report: EAT ME, a half-hour investigation of organic food and farming with special guests Nina Planck, Colin McCrate and John Peterson of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN. The dvd — which contains bonus materials including a 40-minute panel discussion with Peterson, McCrate and Maria Hines, chef/owner of Tilth — sells for only $10, plus $5 p&h. Order on-line or write to warren@thewarrenreport.com)

Who knew when this journey began many months ago that the President of the United States would  go on television to celebrate this historic milestone. My fellow Americans, today marks The Warren Report’s 100th podcast!

In honor of the fact that we the people love round numbers almost as much as we love Cinnabon®, The Warren Report proudly shares these highlights from our recent Words & Wine event with special guest Steven Rinella. Yes, the author of AMERICAN BUFFALO may hunt, kill and butcher big game, but can he endure my ferocious, and sometimes facetious, line of questioning? Watch our centennial podcast to discover whether Rinella withers or dithers under fire. Will he man up or party down? You be the judge and jury. (Due to the current economic downturn, we have been forced to eliminate the budget line for executioners.)

Of course, like Crosby, we’ve got to have Hope. (Otherwise, we’re liable to box our kids ’bout the ears.) Hope is our future. Hope is our wind farm. Hope is the oxygen tent keeping 96-year-old Maybelle Whittaker of Livingston, Michigan alive. I had the great pleasure of speaking with Maybelle the other day. She said: “Warren, what can I do? What can I do to ensure my grandchildren will enjoy at least one hundred more of your charming podcasts? What can I do to guarantee that your unique brand of cultural commentary wrapped in the cheery goodness of irreverent humor reaches its bi-centennial?”

And I asked Maybelle what I must ask you now: Do you have a moment? Do you have a minute to spare for the sake of your country, for the sake of light-hearted critical discourse? I know you do. I knew Maybelle did. And so I urge you, as I urged Maybelle, to take the time, right now, to complete this simple on-line survey.

Sure, you could dilly. You could dally. But together we must rally. Shuck the shackles of indifference and inconvenience. Don the thinking caps of your ancestors. Don’t do it for me. Do it for little Timmy McQuackabush of Filbert, North Dakota whose parents took him to see THE CAKE EATERS but refused to discuss the the movie’s thematic material. Poor little Timmy was clueless about the ethical implications of Kristen Stewart‘s fine portrayal of a young woman enduring Friedreich’s Ataxia until he watched my interview with director Mary Stuart Masterson. Do it for Vedelma Gonzalez D’Ambrozzio of Queens, New York who had given up “green” because she thought it would be too expensive, too demanding to live a sustainable lifestyle until she listened in on my conversation with Michael Pollan. Do it for Sister Delilah Tanto of Tramp River, North Dakota, so cloistered she knew nothing of the works of Chuck Palahniuk until catching our solemn intercourse regarding the ties between literary giants and indecent research. Most of all, do it for your. Do it because you’re proud to be an American. Prove to the world that, as a nation, we are more resilient than David O. Russell is to cast suggestions.

Together, we can rise. Together, we can triumph. Together, we can download another hundred episodes of The Warren Report. Join me. Take this survey, make a donation if you feel so moved. Most of all, just keep reading and watching The Warren Report. Please. Good day, God bless and bon voyage, Bea Arthur.

Thursday, June 25th, 2009
NOVELLA CARPENTER 
and
FARM CITY: THE EDUCATION 
OF AN URBAN FARMER 

Location: 
Tom Douglas’ Palace Ballroom
2100 5th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121 (map) 

Time: 6:30 p.m. • Cost: $25

After graduating from the UW and studying journalism at Berkeley (under Michael Pollan), Novella moved into a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland.  Next door was a weed-choked, garbage strewn abandoned lot, but Novella closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive and a chicken coop.  What started out as a few egg laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, rabbits, a few Nigerian dwarf goats and two three-hundred-pound pigs.  Raised vegetable beds and fruit trees share the corner with homeless people, prostitutes and some truly unforgettable characters (both animal and human) as urban meets rural in the most surprising ways.   For all of us who have ever considered leaving it all behind and becoming a farmer, consider her story both a humorous cautionary tale and a call to action.  

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