Yesterday I saw the documentary Smakelijk eten! (Bon Appetit!) at the local arthouse. The movie shows how what happens to our food before it’s on our plate. And the ‘life’ of food is shocking…
The producer Walther Grotenhuis chose three products: soy, shrimp and beans.

The soy comes from Brazil. Many rainforest is gone because of the soy plantations. Most soy is produced for Europe, and especially the Netherlands. We use the soy to feed the many pigs we have in our country. When the pigs are fed and fat we eat them. So the tropical rainforest in Brazil is gone because Europeans want to eat pig! When I saw this part of the movie I was very happy that I don’t eat meat that often.

The shrimp we can buy at our supermarket is from the Philippines. Many people there try to live from the export of seafood like shrimp, but the huge fish tanks of the rich people disturb the sealife. It’s getting harder for the poor fishermen to catch fish and for the fish it’s harder to survive in the polluted sea. Within one and half day the catched shrimp is in our supermarket. Like it’s fresh shrimp from our own sea, instead of a sea on the other side of the world.

The beans are produced in Kenya, again by rich people with large bean fields. These bean producers need a lot of water to get the best beans. In Kenya it’s not easy to get a lot of water, but the bean producer in the documentary found a way to get the water. He gets it from a small river not thinking about the consequences for the (poor) people who live further along this same small river and who need the water too. The bean producer gets so much water out of the river that there’s almost no water left for others! It’s unbelievable how these beans grow for export, while the people (and animals) in Kenya don’t have enough water to stay alife.

Fortunately most supermarkets sell more and more green products, but there are still so many products from far countries in supermarkets. What can you do to stop these horrible ways of producing food?
- Buy seasonal products, like strawberry in the summer and kale in the winter.
- Look at the label of a product and find out where the food is produced. Is the product from a country for away and is the product not expensive? Don’t buy the food; choose a green product from the same country or buy a similar Dutch product.