Food Inc.

While I was sick with some awful virus back in March, I made the mistake of watching Food, Inc. on my husband's laptop. There's nothing wrong with the film, which exposes many of the unnatural ways we eat in America nowadays. But it's not a good movie for women struggling to feed their families in the best, healthiest, and cheapest way possible.

The end result: I swore never to eat Tyson chicken again, a vow which lasted about 2 days. We simply cannot afford to eat organically, much less free-range-locally-bred-hand-slaughtered fowl.

Walmart, in short, is my friend.

So, it's nice to read an article like this one in the Atlantic on the small things Walmart does to help out the local farms and less affluent families:

The author started looking "into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its newKnow Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered."

Someday maybe I'll shop at Whole Foods in the organics-only department. But until then, it's nice to know I'm not eating apples only grown half-a-world away!