Ingredients

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Audience Member Watched August 2012. Had previously watched Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Audience Member Ingredients (Robert Bates, 2009) I saw Ingredients in May of 2012. I finally started writing this review fifteen months later. I have no idea why it has taken me so long; of all the documentaries that tread this ground I've seen over the past couple of years (there have been roughly a half-dozen of them), Ingredients is by far the best, and the one that comes most highly recommended from this camp. I just never found any sort of "in" I could use to start writing about it, but now I'm at the point where I'm forcing myself to catch up with all the old reviews that should have gotten written months ago and never did. I guess my "in" is "get your ass in gear, you lazy bum, and say something about Ingredients." Most food-based documentaries these days start from the same basic premise: the American system of food production is broken. Some documentaries, mostly the inferior ones, simply use that as a springboard to attack what they see as the underlying problem. Therein lies their failure, at least in part: the idea that there is one underlying problem (increasingly, for lazy filmmakers, that is "oh, no, GMO!") rather than a pervasive attitude, a system that infects everything from the growing to the distribution to the consumption. Given such a broken system, is it possible to find a solution? It is, and it's as easy as doing things the way we did things just a few decades ago, before it was as simple as it is today to fly foods around the globe or drive them across the country: eat what foods you can from providers as close to you as possible. Bates interviews a handful of farmers who have played key roles in vitalizing the locavore movement and lets the idea sell itself. It might not have been the best way to go with this documentary-I've seen more than one review that called it pale (I even saw one that compared it unfavorably to the awful, awful Food Inc., so at least I know how much I can trust that reviewer's opinions in the future)-but I thought it did the trick pretty well; it covered the ground without hammering the viewer into the dust, which is not something I can say about more than a few of the foodie docs I've watched over the past couple of years. Pity those who think a documentary isn't doing its job if it doesn't pound the viewer into the ground. And then avoid their reviews. (This is all relative, of course, I wouldn't be silly enough to try and posit the movie as having a light touch.) In short, well worth giving it a look; if it's not strident enough for you, asparagus knows there are enough other choices out there catering to the velvet-hammer crowd. *** 1/2 Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member CHEAPER isn't better. Our nation's obsession with buying things on the cheap has changed the farming industry and not for the better. Per capita our food prices are lower than anywhere else in the world and our medical care is higher. Correlation? You decide. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member As for a movie, it is OK. However, the topic is very important. I recommend it to my friends also because it talks about agriculture in Oregon and Urban Growth Boundary in Portland (that's what our research about). Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member Good one - I am back to shopping from the farmers market - support the local farmers! Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member This is good. Eat only Farmers market food. Yum Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/15/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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