All Shades Recommends: Food Inc.

We want to recommend the eco-food doc. playing now: Food Inc.

It's a behind the scenes look at the true face of our food system in which a handful of players control a whole lot of products and our people, animals, and planet are not put first.

But don't worry: there are solutions to be had from folks like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser (of Fast Food Nation), and small family farmer, Joel Salatin, as well as from other farmers and a woman turned food advocate whose son died from eating an Ecoli-laden hamburger.

It's an important movie for eaters everywhere and it inspired both applause from me when I saw it and further steps when I left the theater to eat whole, sustainable, healthy, humane food.

Find tickets here.

And if you eat meat and dairy, check out the Eat Wild directory where you can locate local, sustainably-raised animal products raised on pasture in your neck of the woods. 

In L.A., we've got Lindner Bison and Kendor Farm's free-range chicken and eggs right at the Hollywood Farmers' Market.

Personal Action: Planting

Sometimes news about climate change and environmental demise can bring a person down. At All Shades, our Sustainability Coach takes a completely positive approach, reminding us that given the state of things, we have the incredibly fun and adventurous opportunity to create well-being for ourselves and the planet with our everyday choices.

One huge impact we can make with a simple, daily act is to plant something, anything (well, almost anything).

At least that's what Michael Pollan suggests in this recent New York Times Magazine article posing the question, "Why bother?"

One thing he propounds we bother doing is growing edibles:

"But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind."

Hear, hear. You can read the whole article here. 

And, as it's organic gardening month, we're here to help (all year long, actually).