Reading (website) Response #12: Spreading Green

Treehugger.com is a clever (and fairly commercialized) site for green and sustainable living. It appears to be geared toward the “yuppie” gene, including high-end products, fads, and fashions such as Terra barefoot shoes for kids. The site is easy and pleasant to navigate and seems to hit all the highly publicized topics such as the debilitating effects of plastic grocery bags on the environment.

The pictures are of attractive people, funky and expensive looking spaces, and spectacular landscapes. The site would be effective in teaching newbies all about the necessity of going green. In fact, there is a list of several dozen ways to start living green. For those just starting a green lifestyle, click on the beer link to learn all about the availability of green beers, what breweries use sustainable production, and to get green drinking tips. If a reader is wondering just why someone should go green, there is a link for that also. The site takes advantage of the techie mentality, offering RSS feeds and twitter links, definitely attempting to attract the now generation.

While this review is somewhat cynical, the basic tenet of this website is to help the earth and improve ourselves, and that is a difficult concept to argue with. If it takes hype, glossy pictures, and trendy topics to spread the message, then treehugger.com is fulfilling the mission of spreading green.

Retrieved from http://www.treehugger.com/

Reading (film) Response #11: Drink Your Corn

King Corn is an extremely informative film that explores the corn growing industry and the amazing use of corn in America’s diet. Humorous and serious at the same time, two college graduates, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney, are surprised to find that their hair contains corn and are determined to find out why. As it turns out, most of the foods that Americans eat contain some byproduct of corn.

With available technology, corn has been scientifically created to grow more densely, allowing for larger and larger crops. This corn is used to feed cows, made into oil, and used as sweetener, most specifically in high fructose corn syrup. Looking at labels on the grocery store shelf, the majority of the products include some variation of corn.

This film goes a long way towards educating the American public on this aspect of the currently acceptable diet. The segments in the grocery store with Curt and Ian looking at labels were extremely telling, along with the interviews of people explaining just how corn byproducts are manufactured and used in the foods we eat. In addition, the information on government subsidies and just how much corn is grown, the cost of growing corn, and the market value, allows the viewer to see the American tax dollars at work.

The film drives home the need for change in the American diet. Only by making a concerted effort to switch from processed foods to locally grown products will Americans defeat obesity, health problems, and horrific feed lots.

Sally Jo Fifer (Executive Producer/Director). (2006). King Corn. [Documentary]. Available from Mosaic Films, Inc., 3652 Se Stark Street, Portland, OR 97214-3165