} Using your notes from the film, please write a
response to the film.
Use these questions or your own ideas to get
started:
◦ What are the most important themes in the film?
◦ Where is the evidence most convincing?
◦ What questions or doubts do you have?
◦ How can we apply these ideas to our lives or culture?
◦ Requirements: Make use of
your notes. Use one good direct quote
from the film. Do not use any quote that
has already been used by another student.
Read each other’s comments and respond accordingly. Leave your response in the Comments section
here, as that way all the responses will be in one place and we can easily read
them.
I thought the film was really great. I love how it talked about a problem but then showed a solution. It did not really focus on the negative. I thought a really important theme that we see often in society that they point out in the film is how the industry is changing for us. People always expect things to be, like it was said in the movie, "faster, bigger, cheaper". I think that we expect things like food to be prepared quicker, no matter how it is made. I loved the quote said to Joe by his Pakistanian college roommate. It was that "Americans only fear one thing, ya know, inconvenience". I thought it was very true. We do get up tight or upset when something is not there for us when we expect it. Everything is getting faster in our society, like food or technology and we expect it to stay faster or get quicker.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting how we bank on one place to get our food from. We are vulnerable because of it. What if something happened to that store? Not many of us depend on other local farmers.
This documentary concentrated on a lot of issues going on in the food industry. It also clarified how applying technology throughout the years transformed the process of food industry into an easier and faster way. This become a huge problem, and changed the life cycle of living animals. For example Joel Salatin mention how cows ate dead cows. "For Forty years of industrialization and centralization, We feed dead cows to cows". We can understand how if we applied technology, we can easily take this to the worst, and change the whole food chain of the animals.
ReplyDeletewhat i like about the movie Fresh is about modern food production and supply, think the most important theme in this film is when Joel Solatin says,” when ever I heard people say clean food is expensive; I tell ‘them its actually the cheapest food you can buy, so that’s always gets their attention”. I think its very bad to the people that someone else is telling them how bad is the food they’re eating; and I also think they can find out themselves by experiencing and seeing what works for them. The question I have is; since Mr. Solatin knows the bad things about the food, why doesnt he keep it to himself ? or is he trying to make money by telling it to us?
ReplyDeleteThe Documentary "Fresh" was one of my favorite documentaries yet. Unlike many documentaries i've seen this one was very different and took a different approach to how they talked about farming today. I loved how tinstead of showing depressing farms with thousands of animals piled in a pen and dying cows and mutated chickens, this documentary gave me, the viewer hope for america and it's food products today. It showed that there are differences being made and people are taking a stand and making a difference, one "real" farm at a time.
ReplyDeleteA quote i took from the film said " Americans fear one thing, inconvience." I like this quote because it's very true. As americans we do so many things but when it comes to food being inconvienant, americans will always chose convoeniant over inconvienant.
One of the experts also talk about how "nature doesnt like mono-culture" which made so much sense and was a perfect way of expressing this.
This documentary was one of the most interesting takes on the food industry that i have seen in a long time. The part of this documentary i enjoyed the most was its connection to the problem posing style of education. The documentary posed a question then demonstrated how it could be corrected in a sustainable way to help the world not just immediately but continuing into the future. One major problem in america is "cheap food is an illusion" this quote was about how food can be cheap in price but is payed for in your health and the well being off the animal that was sacrificed in for the purpose of "cheap" food. This documentary gave me one of the most interesting insights into american food culture and changed my perspective on where it comes from and how cheap is the name of the game.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this film! It is good to know that there are people out there that are very concerned of the food industry and are willing to put forth effort to fix this problem. It really showed us how to help the rest of the world and be sure to make a promising future for the rest of us. All of these people have confronted the consequences of food contamination, environmental pollution, and morbid obesity. They are also trying to find the best solutions. It's sad that our food industry doesn't care what they are feeding the people of the world, as long as they are getting the money they need. Most of the ingredients are cheap, not the best thing to eat. The farmers in this video are really capturing the idea of making sure this all changes.
ReplyDeleteI love documentaries like Fresh. I've been watching a lot of them over the past couple of years and they've changed the way I look at food and agriculture entirely. They all seem to have a few common themes that I saw in Fresh as well: the American people have become disconnected with and are misinformed about the sources of their food; industrial farming is environmentally unsustainable; and our government supports and sustains industrial agriculture despite the environmental and health risks that are associated with it.
ReplyDeleteThe major difference between Fresh and the other documentaries is, as Kaylee said, that Fresh focused on being positive and proposing solutions instead of just stating problems. For instance, after providing the viewers with information on how organic or traditional farming is better for the environment and the nutrients in the food, and explaining how even though it produces less it can be more profitable in the long run, Michael Pollan proposes a solution, saying "We need to level the playing field. Right now we are heavily subsidizing every calorie of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oil, which are the building blocks of processed food and the least healthy food we are eating, and we're not doing anything to subsidize or support the growing of healthy, fresh produce."
I like this positive approach to the problem of modern agriculture, and I hope to see it emulated in future documentaries as I believe it does a better job of enabling the viewers to realize what they can do to help fix the problem instead of overwhelming them with a feeling of hopelessness in the face of the gigantic mess the industry is in right now.
I have never watched a documentary like Fresh. Although, I did enjoy it. I do believe and agree that these people that are caring about the food industry are doing something right about it. One important theme that I noticed in this documentary is reality hitting people when it comes to what foods they eat. In the documentary it said "We have a obesity epidemic, we have a diabetes epidemic". I also think that its wrong where our government supports industrial agriculutre and does not care about the health of people. I just hope that they find the best solution to this problem because I think its not right at all of what the food industry is feeding people.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the film "Fresh", I agree with most things that they are saying but they are hard to live by. The major theme in the film was how as Americans we have poor quality when it comes to what we are eating. The most convincing evidence came from the man that got a disease from his pig because they were so confined. A quote that struck me as being important came from Andrew Kimbell, the executive director of The Center for Food Safety, he was talking about organic foods, he said, "One complaint we hear most about organic is "it's wonderful, sure. Better for the land, better for the farmer, better for you, but you can't feed the world with it." We now know that that's just wrong." Before I always thought that organic foods were never done because it's harder to make as much. I believe that if we started to buy more organics sooner or later they would become just as popular as industrial grown and the prices will reflect that.
ReplyDeleteI think what could be a theme learned from fresh, it is that despite eating healthy and fresh being nonconventional and difficult in modern urban and suburban society, it is possible to maintain a healthy an fresh lifestyle. While the examples in the documentary may be an elaborate way to achieve the goal of eating fresh, it shows that we individually may be able to do the same for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThe only problems or doubts I see with personally following through with eating fresh is already developed habits and cost. Fresh and organic vegetables are substantially more expensive, and harder to find. Farmers markets are rare and expensive, and I could much easier go drive through a McDonald's and spend 3 dollars on chicken nuggets, even though I know they are disgustingly made. It's hard to break those dirty habits for me and I'm guessing for others as well. I do think though that in popular culture it is a kind of modern and hip view to be green and eat healthy and organic. You see a lot of movies and stuff where the cool main character shops in a street market within local venders. I think there is a desire to eat healthy but there is also that desire for convenience. So fast food restaurants sell salads and "healthy" soups and trick people into thinking they are eating fresh foods.
This film intrigued me. I noticed a lot of similarities with another film I have seen called Food Inc. In Food Inc. the focus was more on the negative aspects of commercial farming. What I liked about the film Fresh was that it didn’t just point out the flaws of the current commercial farming system, but it also presented a solution in the form of a more natural farming system that includes localized farming. The most important theme of the film was to steer people away from the non-sustainable commercial farming seen today, and instead promote the healthier more natural method of farming explained by Joel Salatin. Salatin made some really convincing points but what felt the most important was that in the long haul it will be more cost efficient, healthier, and more safe to farm in a natural way like him than in a commercial system that focuses solely on mass production. In essence, Salatin’s way of farming is better in every way and the evidence is most convincing when he gives a tour of his farm showing just how optimal the whole system runs. After both Salatin’s and Will Allens testimonies defending natural farming I am left with little doubt that it is the way to go. Now it is just up to us, the citizens of the USA, to begin promoting a more natural farming system by consuming more natural products and reducing the amount of commercial farm products we consume.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed watching this film. It really opened up my eyes to the world of agriculture and farming. This movie really outlines the vicious cycle of the current food production methods. Its so inspiring to see how the farmers and even the community people are trying to reinvent the entire food system. Will Allen in the movie said, "We can raise everything we need without the industrial food system". This is really true because we didn't have an industrial food system 100 years ago, and that was much better. It is kind of sad to see how much pollution this industry has gone through without a sense of what people are taking into consumption. But now that this movement is taking place, it is going to change a lot for people in America, food wise.
ReplyDelete