PSA: Don't watch "Fast Food Nation" late at night if you're pregnant

[jan_andrea]

Or anytime, really. I'd read the book a few years ago, and swore off fast food for a year. After that, we'd stop for FF only sporadically, and rarely at that. But reading about something, and seeing it re-enacted on the screen are two entirely different things. I don't think I'll ever eat FF again, and am certainly off red meat for a long, long time. Not quite as much for the way the animals are treated (which is pretty awful, but they're also pretty stupid, and even a huge feedlot is not a terrible life for a cow), but for the way the processing plants treat their workers. That was what really struck me when I read the book, and again when I saw the film. I'd still have a steak if I knew it had been processed by a facility that didn't also treat its employees like disposable meat, but that really rules out pretty much anything from the grocery store. I'll have to see where "The Meat House" gets its meat. It's pricey, but maybe they don't get it from a huge corporation. I'm sure the chicken processing places are even worse, which is a pity, since chicken breasts are so easy. But then, we buy it only when it's $1.99/lb or less, and of course, if the price is that low, then the workers probably aren't getting what they should be.

I finished watching the movie at 11 last night, and then spent the next 2-3 hours tossing and turning, thinking about how the majority of our food is probably produced this way -- cheap labor, which means someone is getting the shaft, whether it's poor hours, no healthcare, or hiring illegal immigrants who have no recourse to the law if the working conditions are inhumane. I have a box of strawberries in the fridge, and I know they were picked by migrant workers who probably got $.50/bushel if they were lucky, and of course no health care and 12 hour days. I have oranges, probably the same deal. Lettuce? Check. Bread? Who knows? Did the farmer get a fair price for his wheat... or was it farmed by a giant agribusiness? I wish I could buy all-organic or just shop at co-ops when I think about things like this. How else do you know where your food comes from or if it's humanely-produced?

I'm always more stressed about things like this at night, and it was particularly bad after seeing that movie. It gets really gruesome towards the end. I lay awake wondering how I can bring another child into this world when there's so much evil around. Alas.

Comments

[the-leh.livejournal.com]

vegan outreach.org is what horrified me on a similar level. Unfortunately I'm an ADDICT and I don't think I could give up fast food forever.

Corporate America is an evil, evil thing. And it's not just the fast food stuff, it's our clothing, electronics, furniture, appliances....everything we consume is cheaply made (usually outsourced) by some worker getting the shaft. The minimum wage won't even feed a family of 1, let alone 4. Health care is a business and is increidibly expensive. The very small precentage of rich people keep getting smaller and smaller and richer and richer; whereas the middle class is disappearing into a very large population of people living near, at, or even below the poverty line. Whoredoms abound and we have people like Lindsay Lohan going to kids shows wearing no panties and short skirts, it's pretty much commonplace -expected, even- to be promiscuous, pretty much everyone drinks alcohol -and binge drinking amongst young people is on the rise, methamphetamine addiction is being called a "national plague" because it's so common, meanwhile the country is divided politically between the right wing Christian Republicans and the Liberal left wing Democrats -nearly 50/50, and we have a president who'd rather dick around with our Millitary in the middle east rather than make things better for Americans.

*sigh* it's scary out there.