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Too much of everything

A Major Disappointment

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Excellent show. An eye opening documentary about the short falls of our ability to provide adequate nutrition for some our most needy members of society. If we all would take a close look, not just at own lives but our friends , family or even our neighbors, we may find how rampant this problem is. Our school lunch program is not perfect and it needs some help. The only way it's going to get help is by people who are willing to fight and do what needs to be done. What if we were to minimize the administration cost, the labor cost and put more money to the cost of a nutritious complete meal. Work as a collective group to end this problem. Please volunteer, make a difference in the lives of our children, give what can be given, care for the well being of the children and our future generations.

This documentary should be seen by everyone who think that the economic system in the US is a perfect one. It also shows how much the people that actually generates wealth are exploited, just for the record bankers, financiers and the stock-market don't generate wealth, its the people that make products and services that benefit humankind that generates wealth.This of course comes from a guy that most Americans would consider a communist.It warns about the future problems that the US might face if this type of problem is as prevalent as it depicts( I don't know all the facts behind this film ). If it is accurate then I hope for the people in the US will fix it instead of hope for the stock-market to fix it, it will not do that.

I'm a flaming liberal. I support nutritional aid for children, but I could barely watch this movie, it was so self-righteous.Hunger in America is a problem, food deserts are a problem, school lunches with too much fat, salt and sugar are a problem. However, I didn't see much in the way of solutions beyond "the government should do more".One family profiled had dozens of pets between horses, dogs and cats. They couldn't have sold the horses? Another inner city family featured a single mom with no education and few career prospects. Her situation of not being able to support 2 young children by herself on $9/hour could have been avoided with decent family planning.Citizens need to take responsibility for themselves first. I'm all for helping the person who lost a job, got sick, etc. My sympathy is not as available for people who deliberately paint themselves into a corner.Frontline on PBS took on this issue last year and did a much better job of showing local solutions solving real problems.

In 2008, the world was greeted with, what has been called, one of the most startling and frightening documentaries ever made. It was Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., an acclaimed, highly-regarded, Academy Award nominated account of the horribly corrupt, unsanitary practices of the American food industry. It was a film that told a lot of facts, but used much of its material as an effort to scare the American public, while presenting it as a problem with no conceivable solution. Also, its own talking point, about how America should overhaul its heavily-preserved, pesticide-ridden food in favor of a greener, more organic lifestyle, was one it didn't really back up. As a documentary as a whole, it did its job (to inform me as a viewer), and I was happy to have seen it. I just wished I had seen it when it was followed by a filmmaker Q&A where I could've asked those involved how did they expect the American people who were on welfare, minimum wage, and food stamps to convert to a life predominately consisting of organic food products?And now, we have A Place at the Table, a documentary focusing on that same group of people, which has been depressingly expanding for years on end. We open with exterior shots of various big cities in the United States, before closing in on a smaller one, Collbran, Colorado a western, rural land comprised of humble, desperate folk who are struggling to make ends meet. We see a church organization member recall how when he started serving hot meals to the public, where anyone can come and eat for free, on Wednesday night, an unprecedented eighty to one-hundred and twenty people showed up. It was a large indication that many people in Collbran were not just desperate for frivolous things, but for something they can't live without.We then expand to other various cities, such as Jonestown, Mississippi, one of the many American towns that suffers from food insecurity. That is when the public, or its townspeople, do not know where they next meal will come from. Think long and hard about where yours will. Mine will likely be a home-cooked meal, with meat, one or two sides, a salad, and a drink. Many Americans, even children, will be lucky to get one of those things.Another term defined in the documentary is locations ominously called "food deserts," which are areas where places that carry healthy food packing nutrition, vitamins, and necessary fulfillment don't exist for miles on end, leaving the only resources to be from local stop-and-shops that stock up on food filled with unhealthy fats and empty calories. I was raised where a salad accompanied almost every meal, seemingly by law, not by choice. Seeing young children who have likely never eaten a radish, a cucumber, lettuce, or an onion in their lives is a stunningly upsetting.Statistics are batted off quite frequently, saying that one in two children will grow up on food stamps in the United States, 30% of people suffer from food insecurity, and currently, over fifty million people in the United States are underfed and undernourished. One of the earliest statistics seems contradictory, but will come as no surprise after a few seconds; Mississippi is the most obese state in the country and it's also the most unfed. Vegetables, again, are difficult to access in many areas, so food that stocks gas station shelves like chips, Cheetos, cupcakes, and hot dogs and sausage that spend nearly half its time on a warming tray are usually what's for dinner. It's, too, widely known that people receiving government aid and food stamps can not afford to spend much of their cash on "luxury items" such as vegetables, because it needs to get them through the month. The government has long subsidized corn, soybean, and wheat products, and has neglected to back vegetables and nourishing products with the same political commodities, we're told. "For years, we've been subsidizing the wrong foods," says Marion Nestle, a food professor.Just a few days ago, I was talking with a friend and spoke the thought that if we lived in a perfect world, wouldn't basic necessities such as food and clothing, in their simple sense, of course, be free to the public? Wouldn't thinks like milk, bread, and corn be available on a no-cost basis to the consumer. The key words were "in a perfect world." in the world we currently inhabit, prices are sky-rocketing for the stuff we should eat and plummeting on the stuff we shouldn't. You, dear reader, reading this review, send me a picture of a sign that boasts in big, bold primary colors vegetables for an amount equivalent to the price of a two-liter bottle of soda or a bag of Lays potato chips.A Place at the Table, again, doesn't offer many solutions to this problem, but they are quick to point out what is currently being done in the favor of stopping hunger in a country where there's more than enough healthy food to go around. Food banks, charities, and pantries, which have increased from two-hundred nationwide to a whooping 40,000 in thirty years, have been turning up to temporarily combat the problem, but a functional, long term solution is still in the works. American actor Jeff Bridges, who is responsible for founding the organization called the End Healthy Network in efforts to assist starving kids and adults, poignantly states, "if another country was doing this to our kids, we would be at war. It's just insane."Full review at http://stevethemovieman.proboards.com