A little bit ago I wrote a post about what the U.S. could learn from other countries about staying slim and being healthy. One of the big points I brought up is the fact that so many other countries eat “farm to table.”

Local farms produce the food in natural ways and that food goes straight to people’s tables. In other countries, people don’t buy a whole lot of processed crap or get all their animal products from conventional farms. Even the grains consumed in countries such as France, are in the form of freshly baked bread – not bread that stays good for weeks because it is baked full of preservatives.

But that really isn’t how we operate here in the U.S. We rarely eat farm to table. And, in general, people don’t worry about our farming system.

But slowly, things are changing. (YAY!) And last night I watched a great movie about the importance of caring where your ingredients come from called “Ingredients.” 

A documentary film, “Ingredients” is all about eating local, naturally raised food. It talks about the dangers of our current food system with its monocrop production system and unnaturally raised animals.

Attention being paid to the local food movement comes at a time when the failings of our current industrialized food system are becoming all too clear. For the first time in history, our children’s generation is expected to have a shorter lifespan than our own.The quality, taste and nutritional value of the food we eat has dropped sharply over the last fifty years. Shipped from ever-greater distances, we have literally lost sight of where our food comes from and in the process we’ve lost a vital connection to our local community and to our health.

I don’t know about you, but this film made me really wish there were more farmers markets around. It also made me super excited about the fact that a client of mine knows a few farms in New Hampshire that ship products!

But even if that doesn’t workout out and I can’t get food straight from the farm, the least I can do is try to buy as locally as possible and get animals raised in the most natural way possible.

Watch the film. Do you care where your ingredients come from?