Mmm..tastes fresh from the factory farm.

As anyone who knows me would say, "Dusty loves to eat!"  I have been an avid fan of food for my entire life.  When I was a baby the doctor made my mom quit breast feeding me because I was so insatiable when it came to eating.  When I was in high school, I would often eat an entire pizza or bucket of chicken on a dare (or to be honest I would just for the heck of it even if no one dared me).  When I was 22, I entered a Krystal Burger eating contest and won handidly (13 burgers in 2 minutes).  I've slowed down quite substantially since then but I still appreciate some good food.  Now that I have fully qualified myself as a food aficianado, it probably goes without saying that food-related documentaries had been true horror films to me in the past.  I have seen YouTube clips of various PETA propoganda and none of it really affected me at all.  Sure, it was sad seeing people kick chickens, gut pigs, and blast holes in the sides of cows but I kind of accepted those things as necessary evils of the food companies.  I also figured with those PETA propoganda videos that we were only seeing the worst because they feel that every animal life is equal to a human life and was therefore pretty damn bias.  I don't hate animals, I think they are delicous as a matter of fact, and I also don't think that a person should treat them like crap but I think that PETA goes a bit overboard.  To paraphrase and add to a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, I feel the same way about PETA as I do about herpes!!  They are the most annoying, self-righteous, ill-informed, ass clowns I have ever seen aside from the people with the Westboro Baptist Church.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn't blink an eye if both groups got together and went the way of People's Temple in Jonestown with a little cyanide flavored Kool Aid. 

If only someone could get them a nice glass of
 Jim Jones' Kool Aid.

But I digress, I got off on a tangent.  As I was saying, none of those videos changed my eating habits at all.  I would intentionally eat a double Whopper with Bacon after seeing one of their videos, I would go outside and kill a fly in their name if I had no meat to eat.  But recently, like in the past 3 or 4 years, I have gotten to be quite the documentary nerd.  I had grown a little weary of strictly seeing fictional movies with contrived story lines and brain dead TV sitcoms, so I started to watch a lot of documentary movies and shows.  I started to watch the History channel like an old man, I started watching the Discovery Channel the way my dad did when I made fun of him for it, and thanks to Netflix I started to avidly throw new docs into my instant que with wreckless abandon.  I always saw these food docs and avoided them because I figured that they were going to be PETA videos on a grande scale.  I had zero interest in any of them, but people started to really go on and on about how good and informative they were so I gave in. 

I watched "Food Inc." about a week ago and I was pissed.  I was pissed at the makers of food but really pissed because I loved all of that good garbage.  I love Whoppers, I love Chik-Fil-A, Sonic is the shit, and Hardee's breakfast is fantastic.  We have not gone on a full scale ban of these foods in our household, but we have started buying some organic stuff (which is something I swore I would never do).  After grocery shopping and after watching the doc, I understand why we eat the crap that we do.  Our grocery bill was astronomical.  I understand that growing this stuff on a smaller scale makes it less efficient and thus more expensive but my God, there has to be some better way around this.  I looked at the situation with the Hispanic family they had in the film and I could really relate.  If you haven't seen the movie, in one section of the film it features a family living on a budget trying to find suitable food to eat at the grocery store and in restaraunts.  The family sees that buying organic lettuce would cost just as much to buy two hamburgers from Burger King and the point is that many poorer people can't afford, as far as money goes, to buy "good" food.  I know the point of the movie was to say that if we all started making these small changes that eventually the food industry would have to change their ways, but how many poor people eating Spam out of a can are really watching documentaries?  We aren't poor but we are no where close to being rich, and I will say that buying this organic stuff may be far and above better for us but I wish there was a way around it.

I think my favorite part of the movie was that they didn't discourage eating meat, because I swear to God I would've turned it off the moment that they did.  I love meat and that will never change.  I don't care how cute and fluffy the animal is as long as they are delicous.  The movie even showed a organic farmer cutting the heads off of chickens as he was talking to the camera.  So at least I can feel safe in buying organic meat with the knowledge a super brainy farmer is out there cutting up chickens in his backyard.  The meat aspect was the only part I really gave a crap about.  After watching how they raise these animals, I was kind of disgusted.  I want all of my hamburger to come from one cow at a time.  I don't want my chicken sandwiches full of steroids.  I would like to know before I eat the bacon that the pig had a decent enough life.  So for now I know that we are the very least going to eat, as often as possible, organic meat.  Its hard so far because I want a Whopper so bad but then I think, "Oh yeah, only about half of that patty is actual cow and the part that is cow came from about 15 different cows.  Oh, and it was flash frozen on an assembly line somewhere in Ohio."

I guess I don't care about the veggie aspect so much right now because I pretty much try to avoid vegetables.  I know that they are good for me and they are supposed to make you feel better about yourself but they taste like crap unless you add a bunch of salt, butter, and grease to them.  I will let my wife worry about the veggies. 

So my days of entering eating contests and downing an entire bucket of chicken are over but I am interested in seeing if changing any of these foods will make a difference.  I have always been skeptical about the whole issue and I still sort of am.  I felt like organic was just Spanish for expensive and all natural meant that it was completely natural to eat whatever was in front of you.  I guess time will tell along with the scales.