Addicted to convenience and consumption, Americans gorged themselves on the prepackaged, shrink-wrapped products of the supermarket for several generations without giving much thought to the increasingly strange process by which food is produced. Ana Sofia Joanes' documentary <em>Fresh</em> (out on DVD) is another sign of the growing public awareness that if we are what we eat, then we're in deep trouble. Featuring interviews with food activist Michael Pollan and Milwaukee's Will Allen, Fresh indicts short-sighted industrial farming, which crowds animals in confined spaces, douses them with antibiotics to keep them from sickening in the unhealthy environment, covers their pens in toxic litter and feeds them things they can't properly eat. Conspiring against the design of nature, the industry has produced food cheaply and in enormous quantity while degrading quality and endangering our health.
