The Foods that Make Billions is a series looking at how big business feeds us. Starting with a look at the bottled water industry, moving through cereals and finally looking at yoghurt, these three episodes explore the history of how these simple commodities have become staple products, part of the global diet.

Liquid Gold looks at the competitive dynamics between two of the global leaders in the bottled water marketplace: Nestle and Danone. Episode one unpacks the brand philosophy and big business strategy behind these big hitters in the industry. But why would you buy something that you could get for free from the tap? This documentary looks at the marketing and advertising strategies used by big business to create demand that results in the distribution of millions of bottles of water around the world.

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Episode two tells the story of a modern marketing miracle: the story of the breakfast cereal. The Age of Plenty investigates the processing, marketing and advertising behind a breakfast that has singularly impacted the way we live. Breakfast cereal marks the birth of modern day "convenience food", invented to make cheap and lifeless corn bits edible and easy to sell, and promoted through reverse psychology, cereal has transformed the way we eat and consequently the way we live. This series tracks the multi-billion dollar breakfast cereal industry, explaining the impact of television advertising on the promotion and sales of breakfast cereals, which endures to this day.

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Over the past few decades, yoghurt has hit a stellar trajectory from funny dessert to scientific super food. Marketed as a functional food, yoghurt is the perfect product to satisfy the market's increasing appetite for high nutrition, super healthy foods. Pots of Gold, the final episode in the series, looks at how yoghurt entered the market in the form of a Swiss yoghurt brand which opened up a world of taste to British consumers and etched a space in the market where previously none had existed. "Ski" shows how, by simply adding sugar and fruit, a simple commodity becomes a high-priced necessity. By taking a basic commodity like milk, and manipulating it through processing, packaging and marketing, big business has managed to increase the profit margins of simple products by monumental proportions, resulting in multi-billion dollar industry.

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These are the foods that make billions. By employing clever tactics and smart marketing, big business seduces the appetite of the consumer and entices people to spend and spend and spend. This is how global food and beverage empires are built.

Edible City (click for video) is a fun, fast-paced journey through the local Good Food Movement that's taking root in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the nation and around the world.

Introducing a diverse cast of extraordinary and eccentric characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system, Edible City digs into their unique perspectives and transformative work -from edible education to grassroots activism to building local economies- finding hopeful solutions to monumental problems.

Inspirational, down-to-earth and a little bit quirky, Edible City captures the spirit of a movement that's making real change and doing something truly revolutionary: growing the model for a healthy, sustainable local food system.

A film dedicated to grandparents and grandchildren.

As a vegan, there are some deeply disturbing images in this video.

Even more disturbing to me, though, is the deep-rooted idea that we need animals as food.

WE DO NOT.

After almost 5 years living (yes, LIVING, not surviving, and in much better health than before) without consuming animal products I have even stopped trying to prove to anybody that this is possible.

There are millions of people in the world who live without eating animals, and I feel that this is unequivocal evidence of this FACT.

Apart from that, the documentary is really inspiring.

I guess we will have to work on the rest little by little.

:-)

Laura

Blind Spot (click for video) is a documentary that establishes the inextricable link between the energy we use, the way we run our economy and the effect it has had on our environment.

Taking as a starting point the inevitable energy depletion scenario know as Peak Oil, it demonstrates that we are at a crossroad of two paths: if we continue to burn fossil fuels our ecology will collapse, but if we don't, our economy will.

Either path we choose will have a profound effect on our way.

The arrogance of entering a community on the other side of the world and not even think for one second that you can LEARN something.

The arrogance of feeling so superior, so much so that you go and TEACH your way to people who, until now, have been perfectly capable to live their lives without your "help".