An important movie: Food, Inc.

To tell the truth, I am only a part-time pop culture junkie. An amateur of sorts. I enjoy my pop junk, don´t be mistaken, and I gobble copious amounts of random entertainment in all mediums and forms (videogames are important, darn it!), but my true addiction, the thing that keeps me awake at night and really makes me a nerd is policy and politics.

I am a political junkie. Guilty as charged. Better get out of the way if you don´t like it on social occasions, and avoid leaving any opening for me to start blabbering about legislation.

There is a way to mix and match those two strands of my brain, however: the documentaries. I love them. I don´t care about those about African monkeys, killer bugs and crap like that, but I adore those that involve policy or politics. I loved "The Fog of War" (and know that Robert McNamara is dead, it is worth revisiting), I adored "Boogie Man" (if you know who Lee Atwater is, you will understand why) and I was enthralled with "The Smartest Guys in the Room" (Enron, remember?). They are fun. I love them. They teach you cool stuff.

Sometimes, though, you see a documentary that it is not just fun. It is important. Al Gore made one not long ago; now in theaters there is another of its kind, and you must go see it right now: "Food Inc.". "Super Size Me" might have changed the way you looked at burgers, but this one is going to make you change how you think about food completely, and I mean it.

I don´t want to get too much into detail (this is not my policy blog, after all; go gorge yourself with my wonkery here), but the idea is that the food that we eat is bad. Not bad as we make bad choices and don´t eat veggies; it is more about eating meat that is basically produced in the worst possible farms you can imagine, vegetables that are controlled by giant corporations, and all subsidized by a farm policy that ends up being welfare for rich companies and help for the worst possible food.

Seriously, go see this movie. It is not just fun or interesting. It will make you see things a complete different way by shedding light to a whole bunch of issues that you didn´t even know they existed. I mean it.