Forgot Password?
Written by Milan Clarke   
Share |
Wednesday, 21 July 2010

American Diet

How do we decide what food to eat? From PROCESSED FOOD, food made cheaper with PESTICIDES and ANTIBIOTICS, to LOCAL, ORGANIC and higher quality food, Americans choose how they eat based on their economic situation, knowledge of nutrition, and accessibility. The short film, Montana Fare, by Jaime Jelenchick, is a documentary about how two women feed their families while living in rural Montana roughly 50 miles from the closest grocery store.1

The two women featured in this documentary come from very different backgrounds. Jenny Sabo is a Caucasian upper-middle class woman from the suburbs of Ohio who decides to move to the Northwest for a more sustainable lifestyle. Minerva Allen is a Native American who lives on the Fort Belknap Reservation. She is an elder who comes from a low-income family and unfortunately, in her past, not having enough food was a common occurrence.

Jenny and Minerva differ in many things, from their race, income, age, and most importantly, the way they eat. Jelenchick’s purpose of this documentary is to look at how two women in different socio-economic classes buy, purchase and prepare food for their families. These two stories are microcosms of the different ways America deals with food.

Jenny Sabo
Jenny grew up eating foods packed with nutrition. Things like whole grain bread, fruits and vegetables were a daily occurrence. Her school lunch was different than other students because her parents did not feed her packaged or processed foods like Doritos, or Oreos. As she grew older, Jenny began to understand the importance of growing local and organic food. The first half of Montana Fare is about how Jenny lives on her own farm with livestock like pigs, chickens and cows. She also has a garden and green house that provides her with fresh organic produce, ultimately trying to grow as much food as possible for her family.

Jenny spends two to three hours per day working her land, whether it is milking the cows for milk, tending to the produce or cooking bread from flour purchased by a local farmer nearby. By eating food from her land, JENNY feels that it provides the best flavor and nutrition. Not to mention the health factor; everything is fresh, and completely organic. Jenny even notes that although it is a tough job, she feels that when it comes to slaughtering her animals for food, it is her job and no one else’s. She states: “by creating my own food I realize that I learn the importance of recognizing where my food comes from.” Also, it is an advantage to know what exactly is being put into her body.

Being able to live a sustainable lifestyle like this is desirable, however, hard to attain for many Americans. Many of us do not have the time, money, or job situation that would allow for us to create our own farm. However, there are bits and pieces of her life that everyone can use to become healthier, more sustainable people. For example, plant something that produces food, like an easy-to-grow tomato plant. Another way to live life like Jenny is to make an effort to only purchase locally grown, organic produce. These types of purchases help environmentally ethical farms grow and they are the farms that America needs to see more of.

The filmmaker Jelenchick notes that a reason why people do not choose to live like Jenny does is because we have become transitory beings, and part of the growth of America has been leaving behind our local foods. Many of us don’t know how to grow a garden. This loss of knowledge, combined with the affordability of junk food makes it almost impossible for people to understand the importance of eating well.

Lower income Americans have to make tough choices when deciding how to feed their families. Think about someone using food stamps to buy food for a family of four. At most grocery stores, organic, fresh, unprocessed foods are more expensive. Thus, when deciding how to feed a family of four with food stamps, healthier options are not an option and they must compromise on quality.

Minerva Allen
The second woman featured in Montana Fare is Minerva Allen. She grew up on a Native American reservation tens of miles near the closest grocery store. Her family did not did not make a lot of money and had to concentrate on feeding their family as affordably as possible. They would by tons of cheap meets, canned foods, and processed snacks, all with one qualification: they must be able last months in case the family couldn’t make it back to the grocery store. Minerva notes that she only needs to go to the grocery store every two months, meaning most of her food is pumped with preservatives to make it last.

Looking into Minerva’s pantry, everything comes pre-packaged. They must buy meat that has been sitting in the market for days, and produce is shipped from thousands of miles away to make it to the shelves. Our bodies were not meant to eat food this way—processed and sitting around the kitchen for months before being eaten, lacking the nutrition of fresh ingredients…

It is a problem we see in society everyday when the less healthy food options are cheapest, and people with lower incomes are forced to eat the worst of the worst because it is all they can afford. Our food suppliers are not helping the cause either. If you think about the layout of a grocery store, only the perimeter is filled with fresh produce, meats and dairies, while the majority of the store is filled with packaged processed junk foods. From the beginning, we are taught to eat this way and have little knowledge of proper nutrition.

However, steps are being taken by admirable people to teach America the importance of nutrition and bridge the gap between different socio-economic classes and their eating habits. First, we can thank Jaime Jelenchick for not only creating this film to educate America, but for streaming the video on Terra’s podcast. This allows the film to reach a wider audience range. To see the documentary Montana Fare, click here.

Another food hero is celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, and his recent television series: Food Revolution. The show is filmed in Huntington, West Virginia, one of the most obese cities in America, and Oliver tries to change they way people think about food in this town. At Central City Elementary School, Oliver works with apprehensive school lunch ladies, a weary principal, and the children, many of whom are already showing signs of obesity and diabetes. Like Montana Fare, this series a real eye-opener to the food problem America faces. The more we educate America about this problem, the closer we get to being a healthier, more sustainable America.
Browse all Greeniacs Articles Browse all Greeniacs Guides        Browse all Greeniacs Articles
_______________________________________________________________________________

1http://vodpod.com/watch/1538781-terra-511-montana-fare




Add your comment
RSS comments

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Click here to Register.  Click here to login.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 10 February 2011 )

SEARCH GREENIACS.COM

Green Facts

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.