Michael Pollan is my absolute idol. I understand that it is absolutely remarkable that a 12 year old is interested in such the concept as food. However, I was irrationally crushed by reading the title of this article. I want to be the next Michael Pollan or Eric Scholsser! I'm glad this kid is PRO FOOD more than most things in the world. We need more people on the side of the farmers and not on the side of Monsanto and Tyson!. Praise to this food advocate and warrior. But for now, I want to be the next Pollan. I want to fight to expose America's food industry, and from this day forward, I will.

-Tyler
thsrock09@gmail.com

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My group is in the middle of producing/presenting a big Food Security Film Fest right now and it's very sad that so few kids (like, teens) come out, let alone a tween! Good for Orren Fox - I have some hope for (and in) the next generation!

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Glad that this one and this article has brought a little attention to that fact.

Adults tend to treat children as pets. They care for them and feed them and in return expect them to follow orders,be pleasant, polite and try to participate in approved activities. Most children do that in order to please their parents and other adults. Those who don't suffer greatly and become labled as trouble-makers or delinquents.

As a teacher,I have been amazed at the energy, enthusiasm and ability of children of all ages. When they are motivated and treated with respect, these 'little' people can move mountains.

Adults need to stop warehousing and stereotyping children and learn to listen to the very real person living in that little body.

Parents, teachers and other adult authority figures who deal with children should have the mantra:

"Do not manipulate...motivate."

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peta2 is now the largest youth movement of any social change organization in the world.

peta2 has 267,000 friends on MySpace and 91,000 Facebook fans.

A few years ago, PETA was the top-ranked charity when a poll asked teenagers what nonprofit group they would most want to work for. PETA won by more than a 2 to 1 margin over the second place finisher, The American Red Cross, with more votes than the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity combined.

"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet. A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today. According to a recent United Nations report, Livestock's Long Shadow, raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined. Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands." The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock. (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S. Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

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I'm glad Orren is paying attention to diet, but there is nothing new about what he is saying. Instead of ProFood a better tag would be ProHealth, or perhaps ProConsumer; and he should change his focus away from the errors people make in selecting a healthy diet, and toward the govt policies that threaten access to healthy food. Consumer education can "fix" poor food selection. But better food choices cannot happen if there are no choices in the market.

Most people cannot afford to eat organically grown foods, which are more expensive because they cost much more to produce and are more scarce than conventionally grown foods. This will only get worse under the new agricultural legislation that the Obama administration is ushering in.

Under the new legislation, the burden and costs to comply with new documentation requirements will destroy many small and medium-sized farmers, both organic and conventional.

All farmers will have to tag every animal with an individual i.d. and keep records on every mouthful of food the animal eats, what chemicals and medicines it is exposed to and all other details of its history. Same for plants, which will be documented by lots. The farmer will have to maintain records of every event that affects the plants, from the source of fertilizer and when it was applied, what other substances were applied, when harvest occurred and by whom, where the produce was processed, and on and on. Farmers will have to maintain records on every gallon of milk, every egg, every hunk of cheese, every bottle of wine, every head of lettuce, every orange, etc. they produce.

What do you think all this paperwork and the added cost of inspectors is going to do to our food supply and food prices???? And we haven't even talked about the dozens of new energy/climate taxes on foodstuffs that are being written as we speak to satisfy climate change hysterics and Obama's need to control every aspect of our lives. I fully expect that even private backyard gardens will be taxed and regulated, even those few plants that Orren will be trying to grow in pots. The reason? Because a family might share excess produce with neighbors. Can't have that! Not without inspection! See how that's gonna work?

We are getting more ensnared daily in all the climate change mythology and the hysteria that's being ginned up so that people will accept the new regs and taxes, and the greater intrusion of govt into our lives. As food costs soar, food choice will disappear. More and more people will have to rely on products such as watered down, artificially flavored fake "juices" because families will be able to afford less, and besides, there will be less real juice to go around. Small farmers will collapse under the demands of the new regulations and taxes, and take the food choice and variety we now enjoy with them.

"Green elitists" such as Obama and Al Gore will access products from private farms using the billions of dollars they will make off us via trading carbon credits or running the corporations that will oversee producers and enforce compliance with the new regs. The rest of us will have to consume whatever is available, including inferior, sprayed produce from less regulated countries, harvested weeks earlier. The alternative will be starvation.

Orren needs to take a more penetrating look at the issues surrounding future food choice and healthy diet. Consumer ignorance of proper diet is the least of our worries.

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is the movie your NOT suppose to see. That movie has the potential to cause a major paradigm shift in the way Americans have been living for almost a century.

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Don't get me wrong, i think it is great that this kid is 'pro food' and trying to make changes in his school. This is a topic I am personally interested in.........

But lets get real here, 'there is nothing new or original here, except for the fact the kid is 12.

Lets look at some of the 'tips'. The first 3 are nothing but common sense (I realize sense is no longer common but......). The rest are just naive and a few admittedly borrowed from Food Inc..

One last question for everybody who is going to tear me apart here. The last tip says:

Respect the farmer, rancher, farm workers, animals (they are farm workers too) and the planet.

How, exactly, does the average consumer 'disrespect' farmers, ranchers etc...'?

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Back in 1972, a person who was then a student and now a friend coined the term "corporate sugar water" as he berated me for drinking a well-known cola-type drink. That name made me laugh and then think about the gestalt of soda pop, as it was once known.

We have been led down a windy path of corporate food production. We believed the ads, took the bait, became ill, swallowed the prescribed drugs, made certain corporations rich--all while suffering in pain and disability.

It will stop only when we give up corporate sugar water and all those other products that are only good for someone's bottom line.

They're not good for our health, our community, or our future.

As a sixth grade teacher, I knew 12-year-olds were smart. Glad to see others are getting the picture.

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