Back on my soapbox

It has been a few postings since I have ranted about corporations, so sit back and put your virtual safety belt on.

I'm in a book club and our March selection was "Fast Food Nation" -- a book which explains how the major fast food companies have drastically altered virtually every aspect of our country. First note....if you have not read this book you should just to educate yourself; or watch the documentary on DVD. One of the most disturbing parts of the book for me is how these corporations have changed the agriculture business. What used to be a country of family-owned farms is now almost exclusively a country of corporate-controlled, mass-production farms. I was already aware of this, but reading this book gave me so much more information into just how bad the "growing" process...whether it is milk, beef, chicken or produce....is. We are poisoning ourselves, and our children, with artificially fattened, or anti-biotic injected hamburgers and chicken nuggets. Even the milkshakes are so full of artificial ingredients to simulate the ultimate taste and smell of strawberries or bananas or whatever fruit you think you are getting in your shake, that it is scary. Again, I vaguely knew most of this, but reading it in this book brought it to my attention in a much more alarming way.

This book is a great companion piece to watching "supersize me" which portrays the consumer side of the fast food industry, and how it affects our health, eating patterns, childhood obesity epidemic, etc.

I'll stop going on and on about this at this point because I know most of my blog readers are already pretty well educated about this already, but I just wanted to encourage those of you friends or family who haven't read this book to do so.

The question was asked at book club last night (after we all found ourselves completely disgusted with all these corporations) "how can just one person change all this?" One answer was that we chose to shop locally as often as possible....to buy bread from a local bakery downtown; to buy produce from the Farmer's Market when it opens soon; to support the locally-owned restaurants (which are way better than the chain restaurants anyway), and to truly think about each purchase you make, and where the product comes from.

For the Fillmer Record....I quoted my Organic Farmin' niece quite often during this meeting! You've made a huge influence on me, Shley!