Season 1
24 episodes
0 min. per episode
Where to watch
This title is not available anywhere yet. Click the button below to promote it and highlight it.
A passionate food activist battles industry giants, uncovering shocking truths that challenge society’s relationship with what we eat.
Episodes
Can learning the meaning of a single term actually help change the food system? David Evans and Alexis Koefoed think so. These poultry farmers explain the real story behind such terms as "cage free, "free range" and "pasture raised" so that consumers can make informed decisions when they go to their local supermarket. Learn more at lexiconoffood.com CREDITS Produced by Laura Howard Directed, Photographed and Written by Douglas Gayeton Edited and Animated by Pier Giorgio Provenzano.
As consumers take increased responsibility for what they eat, many choose to become "locavores", a term coined by Jessica Prentice to describe people like herself who live primarily on food grown or produced in their communities. By voting "local" with their pocketbooks when they go to the supermarket, these consumers keep money in local economies while supporting and strengthening local food systems. They also decrease their "food miles" and with it their carbon footprint, of critical importance in confronting the challenge of climate change. Still, even the most responsible consumers can't find everything locally. Coffee, spices and most fish often come from halfway around the world. In these cases, consumers can embrace the principle of a "connected market". By applying the same rationale used when buying local products to those that come from great distances, consumers can ensure their purchases support the growth and production of responsible and sustainable food systems.
Our earliest descendants were hunter/gatherers. They foraged for their food, were in tune with their surroundings, and ate with the seasons. As nomadic traditions gave way to settled cultures that developed agricultural skills, people became less reliant on their foraging skills and increasingly detached from where their food came from. Today, foraging offers people a way to reconnect with nature and shows that food is all around us. Tyler Gray, for example is a lifelong forager who turned his passion into a business specialized in providing chefs around the USA with the rarest in foraged edibles. Running Squirrel, a Cherokee Indian, learned to forage from his mother. She taught him to be attentive to the changes in each season, to watch how and what animals eat, and note that they always leave something before for whatever animal comes after. And in Los Angeles, David Burns and Austin Young have created an urban foraging movement called the Fallen Fruit Collective. They have mapped the locations of fruit across the city, inspiring similar projects around the globe.
We'll have the synopsis for you soon.
What's more important, that your food is local - or organic? Edwin Marty of Alabama's Jones Valley Urban Farm and Jay Martin of Provident Organic Farms in Bivalve, Maryland explain that neither organic certification nor a piece of paper will ever insure that consumers are getting good food. Instead, they subscribe to the motto, "Local First, Certification Second", and suggest that consumers invest the time to get to know their farmer. LOCAL " The concept of "Local" brings you back into a relationship with the source of your food, with the land, the animals, the plants, the farmers, and with each other." -- by Douglas Gayeton [LOCAL: The New Face of Food and Farming in America] ORGANIC "A labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods that integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used." - according to the USDA's National Organic Program (NOP) LOCAL FOOD SYSTEM "A regional food system is one that supports long-term connections between farmers and consumers while meeting the economic, social and health and environmental needs of communities in a region. A food system includes everything associated with growing, processing, storing, distributing, transporting and selling food. A food system is local when it allows food producers and their customers to interact face-to-face; regional systems serve larger geographical areas, often within a state or metro area." -Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
24 SHORT FILMS THAT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT FOOD. Know Your Food introduces consumers to key terms and principles that will help them make more informed decisions about the food they eat. By illuminating the vocabulary, and with it the conversation about America's rapidly evolving FOOD CULTURE, this series helps people pay closer attention to how they eat, what they buy, and where their responsibility begins for creating a healthier, safer food system.