I cooked my first block of tofu last night.  Seriously.  It was my own homemade “Eugene moment.”  But it took me a year, in a town that makes organic and vegan eating handier than probably 99% of places, to actually put a foot forward.

This morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science today nominated “Food, Inc.” for 2010 Best Documentary for its investigative feature film about our bloated and corrupt food industry. 

The socio-eco-ingesto-minded flick is up against the following:

1.  “Burma VJ”
2.  “The Cove”
3.  “The Most Dangerous Man in America:  Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”
4.  “Which Way Home”

“Cheap food has many many hidden costs, and that’s really what Food, Inc. dwells on,” says the filmmaker, Robert Kenner, in a CBS interview. 

“You have to brutalize the workers, and brutalize the animals, and shoot them up with drugs, and feed them inappropriate diets…there are all these costs that we’re not aware of, but we need to be.”

Kenner describes how the American food industry has, since World War II, been subsidized to create an abundance of inexpensive product.  This effort, he says, has been quite effective. Without cheap fuel, cheap (petroleum-based) fertilizers, and cheap trucking, it would make more sense to eat healthier food from local farms.

Arguably, most people base their diets around convenience and the hit to their wallets.  I know I do.  When I moved to Eugene, Oregon, one of my initial observations as I munched on a glorious vegan pizza slice was “Damn, they sure make it easy to eat responsibly here.”

Unfortunately, most American communities don’t share the wealth of options.  What they all share is rubbish food, like Hot Pockets, Quadruple Whoppers, and Baconaise.

For a time after I graduated from college, I was putting my bachelor’s degree to good use in a restaurant (but that represents a whole other negligence of American institutions).  I spent many a midnight hour in a tiny steam filled kitchen, slipping and sliding on the floor covered in spilled food guts, while I hustled to assemble orders like a GM worker.  I thought to myself “Most people, if they took one look back here wouldn’t dare eat out again.”

That same principle is the social consciousness of the documentary Food, Inc.  Hopefully, people who see their food chain exposed might rethink what they put in their mouths.

But, you know, have it your way.

Image courtesy of FoodIncMovie.com

Robert Kenner - Photo courtesy of cinesnob.net