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Farmageddon: A Food Documentary That Should Serve as a Wake-Up Call to All Americans

Last night, I went to go see the documentary Farmageddon, a movie that I had been hearing about for the last few months.

Farmageddon highlights the USDA’s brutal crackdown on farmers selling raw milk and how the agency’s heavy-handed, corrupt and politically-motivated ways have destroyed the lives of small, organic farmers trying to do the right thing.

The objective of the movie is not to promote raw milk, however. The objective of the movie is to get people to wake up and to start demanding change.

Our food system is in serious, serious peril. As of now, Big Ag has tremendous influence in setting food policy and controlling the USDA, all to the detriment of organics.

This has resulted in monoculture farming, widespread adoption of genetically-modified foods and seeds, growth hormones and antibiotics for animals, toxic pesticides and factory farms — nothing that creates more nutritious food.

Additionally, as Farmageddon so deftly points out, it has also resulted in Americans losing their right to choose what to eat, grow and sell.

Yet the reality is this. Americans are not getting angry enough and raising hell with our president, senators and representatives. Politicians would absolutely change their views regarding industrial agriculture if they knew that their jobs were in jeopardy.

Hopefully, this movie will serve as a true wake-up call for all Americans. We MUST make change happen.

What Can You Do?

1) There is a list of resources on the Farmageddon website of ways to get involved.

2) Sign up for the newsletter at The Center for Food Safety, my favorite non-profit when it comes to protecting the rights of organic consumers. They are constantly suing Monsanto and the USDA in order to protect organic food.

3) Get involved, don’t sit back and educate your friends and family as to what is truly going on in this country.

If you are under the assumption that President Obama cares about protecting organic food, then you must watch this video I shot recently with Andrew Kimbrell, the Executive Director of The Center for Food Safety.

Our president has a very, very strong GMO agenda.

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Living Maxwell

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Dating Someone Who Drinks, Part II

I put up a post last week about a date I had recently and it generated a good number of responses. During this date, the woman asked if it bothers me to be with someone who drinks.

In that post, one of the things that I said was that I would “deal with it” if all of the other aspects of the relationship were good and that the drinking was kept to a minimum. This response of saying that I would “deal with it” brought an interesting comment from Tancie, and I thought it was worth addressing in its own blog post here.

Tancie stated that the phrase “dealing with it” would bring up resentment and that I should avoid all women who drink if it makes me that uncomfortable.

For me, drinking is a very complicated issue and is not so cut and dry, especially given the fact that I feel so strongly about other things as well — organic food being one of them.

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Living Maxwell

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The Struggles I Faced in College and How I Handled Them

As I wrote about the other day, it was during college when I went on antidepressants. Each day was getting harder than the next. The sky was growing darker and darker. It was a major struggle just to survive.

I was overwhelmed with a variety of responsibilities — school work, in which I seemed to be drowning; the tennis team, which occupied several hours of my time per day, not including constant traveling to other schools for matches and tournaments; and my fraternity, something in which I was very actively involved.

With my voice becoming more heavy during each phone conversation, my parents suggested that I go visit a local psychiatrist to see if he could help. More specifically, they thought that antidepressants were the answer. After a brief chat with the doctor, he diagnosed me with a mild case of depression and believed that Prozac would indeed improve my situation.

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“I Was Told My Brain Was Broken”

In November, I put up blog entry titled The Repercussions of Going on Antidepressants, and I received a comment on this post the other day that both disturbed me and confirmed what I already knew. I thought it merited its own discussion here.

The woman who wrote the comment calls herself NoRx4Me and left the following information:

I was put on an SSRI at 24 years old during a bad marriage. I needed guidance and support, instead I was told my brain was broken.

SSRI’s led to stimulants, mood stabilizers, SNRI’s, and lithium for a short time. I was a mess. I lost 13 years. I have little memory of those years (especially sad, because I was raising two boys). I didn’t grow as a person at all. I quit dating in 2003 and never developed knew friendships either. I didn’t even realize this was odd until I was off meds.

I probably would have responded like some others on here while I was still under the influence and told you the meds were great. With a clear mind and 20/20 hindsight, I know the facts, my life was destroyed.

And they do cause physical problems; I lost a ton of hair, and my teeth are a mess. I look like I’ve aged 20 years instead of 10.

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