Food Stamped

Healthy food for all!
I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. It was reminiscent of another insightful film Super Size Me; but instead of experimenting with junk food, the filmmakers experimented with healthy food on a food stamp budget (which is shamefully low). There are many factors that encourage the unhealthy habit of consuming high sugar and high fat diets, such as subsidies for junk food, food "deserts" where healthy food is hard to find, and hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing from the junk food industry. While the problem of obesity crosses class lines, it is especially profound among the poor. Oftentimes, shopping at an organic food store is out of reach on a limited budget, and fresh produce and farmers markets can be hard to find in impoverished areas; so, a film like "Food Stamped" that focuses on the circumstance of poverty has been desperately needed.
In addition to their own helpful tips about how to...

Informative but a little too optimistic
Yes this film was informative and I wouldn't tell people not to watch it. Just to take it with a grain of salt. The filmmakers decided to go on the "food stamps diet" where they could only spend about $1 per person per meal. They vowed to only eat healthy, organic food during this week. The continually ignored difficulties faced by those on food stamps by doing things such as taking herbs from their herb garden (many of the people on food stamps don't even have a home). They also did not take into account that most people do not have their kind of background on cooking organically and would never be able to make the sorts of meals that they made...especially if they are homeless with no real kitchen. While the filmmakers tried to do something good, their lightheartedness as well a their optimism that everyone can eat well on a food stamp diet was off-putting.

Touching and Informative
I appreciated the information and facts provided in the movie and that they put a face to those who are faced with living in these conditions. I would highly recommend watching this movie to get a perspective of those faced with economic limitations and issues related to institutionalized classism. Granted the film-makers themselves living on a food-stamp diet did have handy access to herbs in the backyard, free day-old bread from a breadery, produce at a food bank, and free samples at stores. I don't know if these scenarios are often available in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially when grocery stores may not even be available. Despite this, it was nice that the filmmakers featured organizations that did do things differently, like being able to exchange food stamps for a card to use at a farmer's market. I really enjoyed the piece on nutrition in the schools, and how locally grown food can feed a large urban school district. They also included a program about...

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