An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Dear Mike,

I'm very impressed with Sicko. It's brilliant! Maybe you'll be president some day; but then again, maybe you have more real power as an indy filmmaker than as someone who would need mega millions for a campaign.

Here's hoping you'll take on the food industry next. There are so, so, so many things wrong with it. In no particular order, here are just a few:

-- Non-organic food contains toxins--pesticides and herbicides and industrial chemicals in ground waste--that are making people sick.

-- Genetically engineered food is being sold without our knowing it's been GE'd, and without our knowing what ill effects it may have on our health.

-- Congress doesn't allocate enough money for enforcement of the Organic Labeling Law; this in itself is a crime! We're paying extra for foods we believe are organically grown, and they might not be at all.

-- Most of the produce we find in supermarkets nowadays comes from other countries, not our own. Even when it's labeled organic, we can't know the conditions in which it's been grown. Food from places like China has been shown to be contaminated with all kinds of awful toxins.

-- We consumers don't know what's been done to fresh produce before it's allowed into the US; it might be fumigated, heat-treated, hot water treated, etc.

-- Non-local fresh produce is often coated with wax and various other substances to keep it intact during long trips. We don't know what those ingredients are or how they affect our health.

-- Organic Raw Vegan food promotes health so much more than processed, cooked foods. This is a fact that needs to get out more.

-- Research from The Picower Institute in the early 1990s and the Swedish Academy in the early 2000s showed that cooking food creates acrylamides--harmful chemicals that cause aging and chronic disease.

-- When food is heated over 118 degrees Fahrenheit, the food's digestive enzymes are destroyed. We're born with digestive enzymes but as we get older they decrease. The work of digestion takes a lot of the body's energy, and as a result there isn't as much energy left to fight off disease. We're better off eating raw food, whose enzymes are intact.

-- Raw vegan food is not only delicious (and it is!), it keeps people in excellent health, energized, slim and youthful.

-- Interest in raw vegan food is growing and will soon reach the tipping point. When I first launched RawFoodsNewsMagazine.com, in 2001, media mentions of raw vegan recipes, restaurants and books were rare. Now they're commonplace.

-- I'd be happy to recommend some fabulous raw vegan restaurants and books, and to work on this film with you. I'm a longtime journalist (having written for many publications, including The New York Times) with a background in film and video.

Judy Pokras
Editor/Founder/Publisher
RawFoodsNewsMagazine.com