Sundance Channel's Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Eat

By JULIETTE ROSSANT What is more convincing: preaching the gospel of organic, sustainable agriculture or showing it? In the Sundance Channel's documentary series, The Green, the answer is a bit of both. Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Eat, airs on Tuesday, May 15th, at 9:00 P.M. on Sundance Channel's The Green, a weekly primetime program focusing on environmental topics. The big ideas are spelled out big, in case you miss them, with specific examples, mixing preachiness with practical examples. It starts with text that fills the screen: What we choose to eat and where that food comes from can have an enormous impact on our planet and our quality of life. Can we imagine eating locally, sustainably, and organically? The film takes us to an organic fast food restaurant in Lawrence, KS, called Local Burger run by Hilary Brown. Local Burger served locally raised meat (elk, buffalo, beef, lamb etc) and vegan food. Hilary calls is "sustainable fast food". The first idea is eat locally. Hilary signs up a an overweight fast food addicted person for an experiment called "localize me" He eats at the restaurant for a month and ends up loosing weight and bringing down his blood pressure. It is clearly a success. Who wouldn't want a Local Burger franchise in their neighborhood? The next story is about Trenton, NJ-based Terracycle, North America's largest organic fertilizer company producing a liquid fertilizer from worm waste. It's a nifty system complete with its own research scientist showing off robust lettuce plants (compared with those grown with conventional fertilizer. The system uses green waste (leftover vegetable matter) mixed with manure and paper waste to feed the worms. There is nothing to say but move over Miracle-Gro and three cheers for the worms! Lastly, the film portrays Kris Morningstar, chef of Blue Velvet, an organic fine dining restaurant in Los Angeles. Morningstar is installing a vast rooftop vegetable garden where he hopes to fill up to 60% of the restaurant's produce needs. As our culture becomes more food aware, the food, by necessity, is going to have to be better, it's going to have to be cleaner." Let's hope he uses Terracycle's great products. Interspersed with these simple and direct stories are "experts" including Nell Newman of Newman's Own Organic (her dad Paul and Sundance's head Robert Redford go way back to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). She comments about the general movement, providing definitions and recalling how she convinced her father to go organic, but unfortunately, she doesn't talk about the corporate side of organics. It’s the earnest worm company CEO, Tom Szaky, Local Burger's Hilary, as well as Kris from Blue Velvet who are convincing. Previous articles: Slow Food Tucson Film Festival Culinary Tourism: Hidden Harvest Jay Weinstein: Ethical Gourmet Year's Most Important Movie: Store Wars Alice Waters: Green Screen Film Festival [Chefs & Politics- complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, Sundance Channel,Blue Velvet, Local Burger, Terracycle --> back to Super Chef