Food vs. Nourriture

      Watching ‘Food Inc.’ in class was an eye-opener in many senses.  I found the film was actually following a huge wave across the globe. The world food problem could be seen in two levels:

1)    Countries could be seen as being impoverished enough not to have enough food for their population

2)    Countries are so fed with their poor food qualities that they feed themselves so much with awful food

            Recently I watched a French film which shared the same qualities shared in ‘Food Inc.’. The film ‘Nos enfants Nous Accuseront’ pretty much depicts the same scenario, although there is more of a relationship by following a town through the lessons the film strives to teach as it transitions form a farming town dependant on pesticides to that of an organically sustained film. There are two entities in ‘Nos enfants Nous Accuseront’, the lecture hall of Health professionals that define the pesticide-tarnished French foods, and the town of Barjac as they undergo the changes the lecture-series veers to promote. An individual Health Minister lays out the most eye opening information. Pesticide use in France is higher than any other country in Europe, and 3^rd in the world. Cancer in Europe is notably caused by two factors; 70% linked to environment and 30% linked to foods.  Being told that for the first time ever, children are deemed to grown up unhealthier than ever in a societal earth, due to the chemical tampering in foods. Hopeful plans and ‘perfectly laid out’ scenarios is the lecture’s most prominent tool in the overall merging of this documentary.

 With every example of this lecture in this film, the town is documented as they strive for change. Identifying the children as those needing to be helped most follows the hierarchy of the town from the Mayor, school cafeteria and those parents that have the most profound influence to the next generation. Parents, teachers, farmers, and school chefs all are documented as they all take steps growing and explaining the goods of foods raised with and with out pesticides.

            The impact of these changes not only helps the children but the community of the town.  Being that France is viewed as the ‘Culinary leader’ that it is defied by the viewpoint of the documentarian. What we viewed in class was a lesson pertaining to the problems of what we have a nation, although I believe these two films together show the problems our food systems feeds itself [the global populous] as a whole