I grew up in a house where my Mom made things from scratch. She didn’t buy a lot of prepackaged food and she has always grown her own vegetables and canned or froze what she grew. We didn’t eat low fat anything and eating a restaurant of any kind was rare. We even bought milk and eggs from farms some of the time, and I remember loving that we could make our own butter with the cream from the milk. It was the most delicious butter I have ever had. My Mom wasn’t a health nut, she was just doing things the way she had been raised and we were healthier for it.
While I love my Mom’s cooking, I didn’t develop her talents early on in life. I went off to college and appreciated the convenience of non-perishable food, frozen meals and take out. I did cook real food too, but I would wager that half of our diet was made up of frozen, processed or pre-packaged food. Eventually I moved back towards what I grew up with and today we live a balanced life where we cook healthy meals and enjoy take out or treats in moderation. Education is the key to living a healthier lifestyle.
I first watched “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” on Netflix last year. It’s an interesting and informative documentary about a man who improved his own health and helped guide others to health by juicing. While I think his methods are too extreme for most of us, I still think his documentary is valuable. He essentially cured himself of an autoimmune disease by changing what he puts in his body. This has a personal interest to me since I have a child with an autoimmune disease, but also because it applies to all of us and how we fuel our bodies. I recommend watching it to anyone.
I learned a little more than I think I was ready for when I watched “Food, Inc.” on Netflix. This documentary sheds an uncomfortable light on the farming industry and food safety. I’m glad I watched it, even if it means I will be spending a little more money buying my food at the market rather than from name brand labels, but some of it was disturbing to me. I guess that’s the point though, to get us out of our comfort zones and open our eyes to what we are eating.
Netflix has many more documentaries that will educate you on healthy eating and many more environmental topics that are important for us to understand. April is Earth Month, but it doesn’t need to be Earth Month for us to be invested in our health and our planet. Having these documentaries and the internet available to educate us and help us make changes is such a gift, let’s use it to improve ourselves and our planet!
Have you seen any health, food or environmental documentaries that you would recommend?
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