Please watch ONE of the following films and do the following assignment: Your assignment for this movie is to come up with 4 of your own critical thinking questions AND ANSWER them in complete sentences. Critical thinking questions should take several sentences to answer.
You may choose between ‘King Corn,’ ‘Food, Inc,’ ‘ A Place at the Table’ or ‘Forks over Knives’ — each film is described in detail below.
King Corn -King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm. Available on Amazon Instant Video.
Food, Inc – In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Available at Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu, etc.
FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most; if not all; of the so-called “diseases of affluence” that afflict us can be controlled; or even reversed; by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods. Available on Netflix, Amazon instant video, etc.
A Place at the Table – 50 million Americans (1 in 4 children) don’t know where their next meal is coming from. This film tells the powerful stories of three such Americans who maintain their dignity even as they struggle just to eat. In a riveting journey that will change forever how you think about the hungry, A Place at the Table shows how the issue could be solved forever, once the American public decides that ending hunger is in the best interests of us all.