I have to admit that I’ve gotten completely kind of addicted to documentaries. Food documentaries, to be specific. I honestly cannot get enough. Of course I don’t automatically take everything I see in every film to be 100% truth (no film can be 100% objective), but I just love watching them as food for thought.
I’ve seen a few new ones lately and have been meaning to write about them.
Vegucated
I really loved this movie. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but this was really the catalyst for me becoming a vegetarian. I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to make the jump, but this movie really gave me that last little “You can do it!” push I needed. It follows 3 New Yorkers of different ages and backgrounds that are given a challenge to live a vegan lifestyle for 6 weeks. It’s pretty incredible to watch how they react to the changes and what they learn along the way.
The only thing I didn’t like about this movie is that it took an extremely all or nothing attitude in several ways (a lot of these kind of documentaries do). First of all, they touted veganism as THE lifestyle to choose and discussed vegetarianism as if it was some kind of sad alternative because all animal products are the result of cruelty. I just don’t believe that to be true. They actually insinuated that there’s no such thing as a farmer who treats his animals well, which I KNOW to be false. Aside from that, this movie was informative and entertaining and overall really fun to watch.
Genetic Roulette
Ever wondered what the heck a GMO is and why all these health nuts are up in arms about it? Watch this movie! You will be up in arms, too. It completely explains everything in a very clear and informative way. I can’t believe I never knew about the genetic modification of our food, and it completely changes the way I think about what I get at the grocery store. Because of this film, Jason and I have switched to organic produce.
Fun fact: All products made under the Trader Joe’s label are FREE of GMO’s. How amazing is that?
Hungry for Change
I wasn’t a massive fan of this one. It had a super corny “plot” which followed a female character as she stopped eating junk food and started eating fruits and vegetables. Not to mention that the information and several of the interviewed experts are repeats from Forks Over Knives and Food Matters. In other words, save your time and watch one of those wonderful films instead.
Earthlings
Wow. This one is a wow. It’s 100% narrated by Joaquin Phoenix and is made up of video footage showing the exploitation of animals in the food, clothing, entertainment, and science industries. It’s incredibly graphic and incredibly disturbing. But it’s also very moving and thought provoking. You will see things happen to animals that you cannot even possibly imagine. But its an eye-opener that I think everyone should see. I cried and turned my head away at several points in the film, and will never forget some of the images I saw.
All of these movies can be found online, most of them for free!
Other food documentaries that I’ve written about:
I hope that I gave some of you movie ideas for the weekend! 🙂
Thanks for reading!
-Lauren