How Watching Movies Can Make You Healthier

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          There's a series of movies that will make you fitter and healthier.  It's like magic!  All you have to do is sit there on your keister and watch 'em.  

          But I warn you:  There's no going back.  Your brain will, officially, be washed. 

          These movies change your habits and thought patterns about food completely and irrevocably.  To quote Rick from Casablanca:  "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."    

          That's what happened to me anyhow.  It's like the ideas slowly wormed their way into the very fiber of my junk-food-loving being.  

          It all started with a few pleasant couch potato nights at home watching movie rentals.  (Probably while downing some sort of junk-food.)  I stumbled on one of these documentaries and couldn't stop with just one (a little like potato chips, hee hee).   

          The first film was a documentary called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  It's about a guy who drives across America watching other people eat yummy, fattening food, while only having this gnarly green juice.  (Doesn't sound too appealing, does it?)  

          But the movie was, actually, incredibly inspiring.  He completely transformed his body, his health, and his life.  It does a great job of illustrating what vitamin rich foods will do for you.  

          Now I'm not saying we were inspired to do an all-juice cleanse for weeks on end (didn't happen), but we did dig out a juicer that Michael bought 20 years earlier and start using it. 

          Then came Food, Inc. and Super Size Me.   Honestly, these movies should make any sane person a vegetarian.  (Note:  It did not make me a vegetarian.  Draw your own conclusions on that one.)  

          It did make me think more about what's done to the animals raised for meat, what chemicals and hormones end up being in that meat, and how it effects us.  It gave me a real respect for organic meats.  After all, as the saying goes, "What we call organic, our grandparents called FOOD."

          With each movie, processed food looked less and less appealing, and real old-fashioned foods looked better and better to me.  It made me notice how true the line in Food Matters was:  "Americans don't eat food.  We eat food-like products." 

          At some point during my food consciousness-raising film fest, I went to the grocery store.  I was doing my normal 'grab a few things and get the hell out before the Muzak, and the angry people with carts, sucked out my will to live'.  

          Headed to the check-out, I cut down the soda aisle and just stopped in my tracks.  It all looked different to me.  I just thought:  'Dang!  This is a big aisle.  This is a long aisle.  These shelves go from the floor to above my head....and in all of these gallons and gallons of product...there is not a vitamin in sight.  It doesn't even really satisfy the bodies need for fluid.  It's full of stuff we don't need.  Why do we drink it?'

          I didn't toss out every soda in the house.  I didn't swear off sodas forever, but it did look different to me.  It looked like sugar, and dyes, and chemicals.  And it made water sound like a really good idea. 

          I've never thought of myself as a truly bad eater.  I mean, I've never met a fruit or vegetable I didn't like.  (But, then again, I never met any candies or cookies I didn't like either.)  

          Next came the documentary Forks Over Knives.  It's about how a lot of the health problems we have could be fixed by diet.  By then the idea of eating good, clean, nutrient-dense food went from being something that I 'should' do, or something that I planned to get around to someday, to something I actually wanted to do.  

          As Kris Carr says in the documentary about the connection between food and cancer Crazy Sexy Cancer:  "If it takes a lab to make it, it will take a lab to digest it."  But, it was less about hating all the things the food industry keeps coming up with to tempt us, and more about loving all the real stuff I grew up with.  I figure you don't often hear of someone developing a health problem because they love veggies and fruits too much. 

          Apparently, a lot of other people have been watching these same movies.  An amazing company has sprung up in the DFW area called:  greenling.com.  They encourage our healthy eating impulses (not to mention supporting our local farmers) by bringing fresh, organic food right to our door.  

          They even offer meals that are prepped and ready to cook.  With their help we get to, easily, have a fresh, delicious, meal at home.  Genius!  It saves me a trip to the grocery store, a lot of meal-planning challenges, and the temptations of all the things not on my list jumping into my basket; including the candy winking at me in the check-out line.

          An unexpected side-effect, from eating all of this good stuff, is that my taste buds have changed.  They've started registering fruits as 'very sweet', and I notice a lot more subtle tastes.  Pre-packaged foods train us to taste only the artificially hyped-up flavors like SWEET, SALTY, and CHEESY, and make natural flavors taste kind of boring. 

          Huh, maybe, all of these small changes are just a way to help me appreciate the occasional wholesome dessert (like, say, pie) even more than ever?

Have you seen any of these movies?  What inspires you to eat healthy foods?  What's your favorite way to fall off the whole-foods wagon? 
     
As always, comments and 'Likes' make me pathetically happy.  Just a simple hello, zdrarstruyte, guten tag, buna ziua, or dzien' dobry...would be awesome!