Thursday, March 25, 2010

Food Fight Screening & Discussion Panel


Last night there was a screening of the documentary Food Fight, at the Crest Theater in Westwood, followed by a discussion panel. Panelists included Chris Taylor, the director, Suzanne Goin, chef/owner of Lucques/AOC/Tavern, Evan Kleiman, chef/owner of Angeli Caffe and host of Good Food on KCRW, and Russ Parsons, author and editor of the Los Angeles Times food section.

The 2008 film is about the shift to mass produced industrial foods which deliver cheap calories and the movement which began as the fight of a few passionate people to look for a better alternative. The rise of the green markets / farmers markets, the role of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse in both educating the public and building a supply chain of local producers where none had existed before and the incentives of government subsidies in pushing packaged calorie dense and nutritionally questionable foods.

Goin and Parsons both appeared in the film. The theater auditorium was mostly full and the audience applauded at several points. The panel discussion was somewhat interesting although few of the questions were actually questions. Most questioners wanted to make a statement or talk about an organization that they were involved with. Rather than end with a question mark, most audience questions ended with the statement, go to yadayadayada.ORG to learn more.

Homegirl Cafe provided mini tastes of their food in the lobby for free and the theater sells both organic and regular popcorn. I did my part for sustainability by choosing the organic popcorn and by walking to the movie theater.

No comments:

Post a Comment