Digital Food

Digital Food

2015, Health  -   10 Comments
7.86
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Ratings: 7.86/10 from 66 users.

It is estimated that by the year 2050, the world population will reach nine billion. Digital Food asks how we will feed this future population, and what steps can be taken today to prepare for those sustenance needs. The filmmakers speak to authors, chefs, farmers and scientists to better understand the current state of food production and consumption, as well as the potential for technology to improve the future of food by reducing the need for land, soil and fossil fuels.

A tour of a solar powered interior grow house in the Netherlands demonstrates its potential to eliminate the need for fossil fuels and soil by using LED lights that mimic the climate conditions of spring year-round. This makes the grow time much faster than it would be in a four season environment, and the ability to stack seven rows of crops atop each other makes the space seven times more efficient than a traditional greenhouse.

Chef Dan Barber proposes that instead of producing new food for anticipated future populations, we instead make the most out of using existing crops by reducing food waste and creating a fairer distribution of food across the world. We go inside his kitchen where he creates dishes such as carrot steak out of carrots that have been aged in beef fat. He states we need to "move away from what we covet and towards what the land wants to produce" suggesting we should alter our eating habits to suit the environment, instead of eating based on our desires or for convenience.

Author and philosopher Julian Baggini considers the tension that exists in consumers wanting food that is cheap and plentiful yet clean and healthy. He examines the role of trust in food production and consumption and the need for ethics in the standards and systems that are meant to protect consumers. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, notes that while informing people about their food will help them understand where their food comes from, it is not in the interest of the food industry and results in push-back from corporate lobbyists.

Digital Food offers a thought-provoking look at food production and consumption while proposing some unique ways of approaching the future of nutrition and sustenance.

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winter andresen
winter andresen
3 years ago

the real problem here is that you buy a product now because the internet says it is healthy but a few years later it is found that the products you bought actually cause cancer, heart disease, etc. You have to buy natural foods and cook from scratch. Mr. Obvious

Geo
Geo
5 years ago

The globalist solution is to kill you or cause someone else to kill you. About 5 to a plastic coffin bin, with acres of those bins staged around the country waiting for apparently 2019 or 2020 (go look) when Deagle.com shows a much lower usa population.

Tleigh
Tleigh
5 years ago

Notchbeard.... god only help these poor people dying of 'world hunger', do you really think feeding them salty, greasy, sugary processed rubbish is going to help them?
I don't think processed food was created so we wouldn't 'all starve' it was created because it's cheap and a good money spinner... I'm pretty sure the corporations that mass produce processed crap with no nutritional value really care about peoples' health LOL!

LeFleur
LeFleur
6 years ago

100% Plugged...this is an advertisement !

Notchbeard
Notchbeard
8 years ago

Processed food was created so we all wouldn't starve and get rotten food. It saved millions of lives by allowing people to EAT. Today, we STILL NEED IT. It is not possible to do anything proposed here for the majority of people on earth. This is for privledged first worlders that think healthy food will solve world hunger, the places that are starving ALL OPERATE ORGANIC FARMING LOL. Industrialized mass production is what they are lacking, not organic locally grown produce give me a break. Take an economics class sometime and realize WHY these processes are NECESSARY to feed the ever growing mass of humankind.

Canada
Canada
8 years ago

Blue tortilla your ignorant just for stating that. People watch documentaries to become more informed on topics in which they don't know all the details. Clearly shit sells and theres a bunch of chemicals ,marketing and phycological reasons for peoples actions.

Yes you eat healthy, but not everyone can go out to their back garden. I am very lucky that my dad grows everything in the garden from a seed. But a lot of parents and people I know don't because they have better things to spend their energy on because it is not important to them.

If they some how or someone made it a way that they saw it to be important and it effects them then possibly they would change..

Any who, awesome documentary enjoyed watching it.

Duning
Duning
8 years ago

I've already switched to Soylent. Only thing I eat now. 200$ a month.

Bluetortilla
Bluetortilla
8 years ago

Terrible! Just a bunch of common sense. You'd have to be very ignorant indeed not to know the things covered here. People do whatever their doctors tell them and eat a diet that is overwhelmingly made of processed foods.
I do not eat processed foods, though I can't eliminate it totally of course. But a quarter pounder with cheese? Come on- how many people actually even consider that to be food? I'm not holier than though- but buying food in open markets and cooking veggies, legumes, and different kinds of grains by yourself is the way to go. Buy and eat lots of fresh fruits or eat them dried with nuts. It makes you happier and that's what counts. If you're gonna eat meat, by it off the bone or buy a freshly slaughtered chicken. Grow food yourself and if you can get fish from a local pond that you know is clean.
A device to tell which watermelon is sweeter?? My God, we are so incredibly selfish and dunderheaded.

paul treseler
paul treseler
8 years ago

Mr. Pollan is cute with his 26oz. of crude oil required to make a fast food sandwich.