From the category archives:

food films

What Goes on Behind the Kitchen Door

March 28, 2013 bay area bites

UC Berkeley’s Saru Jayaraman, on a mission to improve the working conditions of restaurant employees around the country, is the author of Behind the Kitchen Door.

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Documentary Food Films: An Update

March 14, 2013 food events

What’s new on the documentary food front.

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CIR Serves up Hidden Costs of Hamburgers

August 20, 2012 berkeley bites

The average American eats three burgers a week. The Center for Investigative Reporting explores the real price of cheap beef in their new animation short The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers.

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Growing Cities: An Edible Field Trip and Urban Farm Film

May 25, 2012 food films

Perhaps the coolest post-college road trip: Finding and filming urban farms around the country for the forthcoming documentary Growing Cities.

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Weight of the Nation: Battle of the Bulge Comes to Cable

May 15, 2012 civil eats

HBO tackles the vast and complex problem in a new four-part series, The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America’s Obesity Epidemic.

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A Tale of Two Totally Different PBS Programs: America Revealed’s Food Machine and Food Forward

April 11, 2012 bay area bites

The good, the bad, and the ugly regarding two new food programs from PBS: America Revealed‘s first episode “Food Machine” and Food Forward‘s pilot.

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Best Blog Posts from the 2011 Lettuce Eat Kale Archives

December 28, 2011 baking

Wherein we look back at the stories of 2011 on LEK, pick the best of the bunch, and then take a nap.

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Toast: A Slice of Nigel Slater’s Life Comes to the Screen

October 13, 2011 bay area bites

Nigel Slater’s new film, “Toast,” based on his best-selling memoir of the same name, reveals a boy, his hunger, and the power of food in an unhappy family.

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Corner Store: Film Explores Community Hub and Home

September 25, 2011 bay area bites

The Corner Store follows one Palestinian shopkeeper’s story of sadness and sacrifice to secure a better life for his family in the United States.

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The Perennial Plate Swings by the San Francisco Bay Area

June 30, 2011 baking

Meet omnivorous chef Daniel Klein and his vegetarian girlfriend/cameragal Mirra Fine, the dynamic duo behind The Perennial Plate, a web-based, weekly documentary real food romp devoted to socially responsible, sustainable and adventurous eating.

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It’s Gettin’ Real in the Whole Foods Parking Lot

June 16, 2011 bay area bites

An interview with Whole Foods Parking Lot creator DJDave, also known as David Wittman, who penned a memorable little ditty viewed by millions about what goes down in the Whole Foods parking lot for affluent shoppers picking up organic kale and Kombucha.

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Food Forward: A Sustainable TV Show for All Americans

June 5, 2011 bay area bites

The TV pilot for “Food Forward” profiles people across the country making a difference in communities where good food is hard to come by, through their work in small-scale sustainable food production.

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5 Questions for Food Forward Filmmaker Greg Roden

June 2, 2011 bay area bites

Food Forward, a new TV program coming to PBS this fall, showcases food renegades around the country changing the way Americans eat.

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Berkeley’s School Lunch Program Flawed, Say Insiders

February 14, 2011 berkeley bites

The successes — and shortcomings — of the Berkeley’s revamped school food program received equal billing at the premiere of short films called the Lunch Love Community Documentary Project.

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Berkeley’s School Lunch Makes its Big Screen Debut

February 13, 2011 bay area bites

The Lunch Love Community Documentary explores edible education and lunch reform in Berkeley schools.

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Joy Moore: Community Food Reformer

February 11, 2011 berkeley bites

Fresh food advocate Joy Moore on school food reform and getting good food to under-served Berkeley residents.

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Giving Thanks with Cafe Gratitude

November 24, 2010 berkeley bites

An interview with the general manager of Berkeley’s Cafe Gratitude, a Bay Area chain with its devotees and its detractors.

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Eat, Pray, Love: Still Hungry

August 19, 2010 food films

Okay, it’s been four years since I read Eat, Pray, Love, the memoir of self discovery, spaghetti, spiritual healing, and hot sex, so my memory of the book may be a little sketchy. But let’s face it, Elizabeth Gilbert‘s bestseller needs no introduction.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, [...]

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Ten Teens Rocking the Food Revolution Scene

July 7, 2010 food films

Ten teens rocking the Food Revolution scene, making a difference on the food front in schools and communities around the country.

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What's On Your Plate? Food for Thought for All Ages

March 31, 2010 civil eats

Review of What’s on Your Plate? cool food documentary for kids of all ages.

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10 Top Documentary Food Films

March 6, 2010 food films

Ten non-fiction food films worth watching.

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Favorite Food Films

February 19, 2010 food films

How many fabo feature flicks can you think of where food is the focus? My friend Jim Kahn and I were mulling over this very matter recently as we chatted about the marvelous Meryl Streep. While Julie & Julia was obviously a meal of a movie, the pleasures of the table also got more than [...]

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What's Cooking with Julie & Julia

August 22, 2009 food films

There’s been loads of ink spilt on the foodie flick Julie & Julia. Indeed, I may well be the last food writer on the planet to weigh in on the film. If you’ve been out to lunch, this is the movie where Meryl joyously channels Julia Child and Amy Adams has the unenviable task of [...]

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Food, Inc. May Make You Lose Your Lunch

June 30, 2009 food films

A film about what we eat could well win the award for the best horror flick showing in theaters this summer. Take a look, if you’re game, at Food, Inc., though a heads up for animal lovers and vegetarians: This documentary is hard to stomach. If you’ve read both Fast Food Nation by writer Eric [...]

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Food Stamped: A Film For Our Times

June 22, 2009 food films

Who knew that a documentary on the food stamp program could be funny, infuriating, informative, and entertaining? Food Stamped sets out to answer a simple but important question: Is it possible to eat well for a week on the federal supplemental food aid program? In this new film nutrition educator Shira Potash and her movie-maker [...]

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Paul McCartney Sings: All You Need is Meatless Monday

June 15, 2009 food films

This just in: Paul McCartney & Yoko Ono seem to have put their legendary differences aside to promote the Meat Free Monday campaign, which is, well, exactly as its name suggests. There’s nothing particularly new about this notion. U.S. Presidents Truman and Roosevelt asked folks to give up eating animals during both World Wars. And [...]

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A Shout Out for The Garden

May 2, 2009 community gardens

Go see this award-winning documentary about a highly-politicized patch of green and the community who cultivated it in South Central Los Angeles.  The saga of this urban garden and its people screens this week at the Elmwood theatre in Berkeley and the Lumiere in San Francisco. It’s gritty, complex, full of shady backroom deals, greed, [...]

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