My Food, Inc. Farmers Market Experiment

The other day I finally watched Food, Inc.

And I was horrified.

Not because of the animal treatment stuff, b/c really, I knew all that already. I guess I actually knew all of it, but seeing it presented in a movie was pretty shocking. How the government subsidizes corn and that's why our beef feeds on corn and that's why our beef has so much e.coli in it. And how Monsanto literally owns the soybean and how they go after anyone who dares try stay GMO-free. And how half of Monsanto's former executive team is infested in our government (including a former counsel on our SUPREME COURT). And the pork packing employees who are RECRUITED in Mexico, helped here illegally, treated like utter garbage, then Smithfield and cohorts make deals with the government to arrest 15 people periodically, so that the company isn't investigated for their recruitment efforts. Anytime you eat Smithfield pork, you're encouraging illegal immigration. UGH.  The problem is that most of the time we are eating it and don't even know it, because they pack stuff for so many other companies. I buy Fresh & Easy bacon often, but I know Tyson packs it (I saw the boxes). I wish I knew who packed Trader Joe's bacon.

Last week after trying local, no hormone, no antibiotic, grass-fed beef at the Studio City Farmers Market, I already decided I would be buying this beef from now on, merely because the taste was incomparable to any supermarket meat.

But what concerns me is that I eat a lot of fruits and veggies. Which is great. But I don't buy much organic, and I'm concerned about all the pesticides I eat. If I eat 4-5 servings EACH of fruits and veggies a day, every single day, that's a lot of pesticides. 

So now, my experiment is to see how much it will cost me every week to buy most of my stuff at the farmers market instead. I'm not that concerned about something like say, grapefruit with a very thick skin. Plus, those are coming from California anyway so I don't feel so badly. the killer will be tomatoes, which I can get cheap at Jon's and not at the farmer's market. But lettuce, things like that, I don't think will cost me very much more. I usually spend about $15 a week at Jon's on fruits and vegetables.  So I will avoid Jon's for the next couple weeks except for a few very select items and see what the difference is. I've always said it would be too expensive to go all farmers market, but I've never really tried.

So we will see.  If it's not that much more expensive, I don't really have an excuse.