Hollywood plus Bombay (the former name of Mumbai, India) equals “Bollywood” – with its origins in the 1970s, when India overtook America as the world’s largest film producer.

Bollywood’s worldwide success has brought forth a wealth of family-friendly, heart-wrenching musicals recognized as equal to anything from Hollywood in terms of quality, cinematography and innovative story lines as well as technical advances in areas such as special effects, animation, etc. But Americans have missed out on most these global hit films.

On Thursday, December 30 at 7 pm the Green Door Film Society will see and discuss “Taare Zameen Par” (“Like Stars on Earth”), a classic 2007 Bollywood epic that centers on a chronic daydreamer, 8-year-old Ishaan (Darsheel Safary).  His life take a turn for the worse when his parents, frustrated that he keeps getting into trouble, send him away to a boarding school in hopes he’ll become more disciplined. But Ishaan’s misery abates when the unconventional new art teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan), decides to try to help his imaginative young student discover his true identity in this charming Indian drama.

“Screenwriter Amole Gupte and his wife, Deepa Bhatia, were inspired to create a script that would show how not every child thrives in the rigid school systems, basing their original concept on the youth of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who, like so many geniuses, struggled in school,” says reviewer James Plath. “The message is heartfelt and the pay-off heartwarming. It’s the kind of movie that can be watched and appreciated by American families because there are so many things to spark discussion among parents and children.”

In classic Bollywood manner, the film contains eight songs…

Like Stars on Earth (Taare Zameen Par)

Greens N Grains Deli hosts a natural and organic dinner special each evening before the Green Door Film Society meetings. Enjoy a delicious soup specialty, salad, a fresh baked roll and a cup of tea for $7.50, available from 6 pm on. The Film Society screenings take place at 7 pm and there is no charge for membership but seating at screenings is limited to 20 people – call 920.868.9999 to reserve a seat.

Greens N Grains Natural Foods and Deli is open daily from 10 am – 5 pm – except on Film Society screening nights when they will remain open until 9 pm – in downtown Egg Harbor at 7821 Hwy 42, and can be reached at920.868.9999 or by email at info@greens-n-grains.com. The store’s Website features news and special monthly discount flyers at Greens-N-Grains.com.

Huffpo reports , ” The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C., is asking the California Department of Food and Agriculture to reconsider a $180,000 grant given to the Alliance For Food and Farming to combat the negative public perception of pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables. They are also calling for an investigation into how the grant was awarded.” Click to read: U.S. Spends $180K To Promote Pesticide Residues On Food.

It seems that there are some people who would like to bury the following lists and urge the public to quit thinking about what they eat… because numbers indicate that people are waking up and buying more organic. In order to counter the effort to discredit the Dirty Dozen, we’d like to share the following updated information with you and hope you pass it on.

The Environmental Working Group recently updated their “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15″ produce lists.

The “most contaminated” list below is organized from the very worst down. Peaches once topped the “dirty dozen” list because they require a lot of pesticides to grow, but it seems that celery has bumped them into second place. Onions remain on top as the least contaminated with pesticides.

More Information:

For easy reference, download a PDF with the wallet-sized guide as developed by studies of data from nearly

96,000 tests for pesticide residues in produce conducted between 2000 and 2008 and collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and analyzed by the Environmental Working Group.

Pepsi’s strategy: Create a research environment so scientists and public health experts don’t feel out of place at the corporate HQ of sugar, salt and fat.

Last month PepsiCo set off a firestorm among angry bloggers when the company attempted to buy its way onto the popular ScienceBlogs (run by Seed Media Group) with its own offering called Food Frontiers. Apparently, the actual scientists didn’t appreciate having their space invaded by PR flaks.

One blogger put it succinctly, “I don’t care how many PhD scientists they hire, PepsiCo is a corporation, not a research institute, for crissakes!” Within two days, ScienceBlogs apologized and pulled PepsiCo’s plug, but not before some disgusted bloggers quit altogether. (Food Frontiers continues to live on PepsiCo’s corporate Web site.)

While this story illustrates a victory in the battle against one corporation’s attempt to control scientific discourse, in the bigger picture, PepsiCo appears to be winning the war.

PepsiCo Picks off Public Health Experts One by One

Ask anyone who’s been in the public health field for at least 10 years if they’ve heard of Derek Yach, and the response is likely to be: “Of course, he’s a public health hero.” If you ask for a response to Yach’s decision to go work for PepsiCo, the reaction will be head-shaking. “Shocked,” “deeply disappointed,” “a blow to public health,” were all phrases I heard when the news came, in 2007, that one of the world’s most respected public health experts went over to the dark side.

Derek Yach’s story even plays a prominent part in a graduate-level food policy class at NYU that dedicates an entire class session to industry co-optation, because of its current impact on the nation’s debate over the obesity epidemic.

It was a personnel coup for the nation’s largest food company and purveyor of such notoriously unhealthy products as Mountain Dew and Cheetos. PepsiCo’s new “director of global health policy” came with a pedigree the company must have been salivating over.

You can read the rest of this article, originally published at AlterNet…
How Junk Food Giant PepsiCo Is Buying Up High-Ranking Experts to Look Like a Leader in Health and Nutrition

This film may reverse all of your thinking about standing on the sidelines regarding Japanese Whaling… it’s time to Act! Find The Cove on Facebook and lend a hand.

This award-winning, ground-breaking documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos, plays more like an espionage thriller, depicting the annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan. The Cove follows a team of activists and filmmakers as they infiltrate a heavily-guarded cove in Taiji to expose the capture and slaughter of dolphins and the consequences of eating the mercury-laden dolphin meat. In this remote village the film crew witnesses and documents activities deliberately being hidden from the public: more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are being slaughtered each year and their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food in Japan, often labeled as whale meat.

They are in the latest news, “Japanese whalers who complained of injuries from rancid butter thrown at them by an anti-whaling group were actually suffering from their own pepper spray attack, the protesters said Saturday.”

And they need to be stopped!

The film will be shown in the loft above the Deli at Greens N Grains grocery in downtown Egg Harbor and screenings are free – however, the seating is limited to 30 persons. You may make a seating reservation by calling 920.868.9999 or by email at info@greens-n-grains.com.

“The $6.50 natural and organic dinner special; soup, salad, a fresh baked roll and tea will feature another tasty example of the Deli’s specialties,” says Kathy Navis, store owner. “We start serving at 6 pm with the film screening at 7 pm. The dinner special is available to anyone without reservations, but our film seating is limited.”

Greens N Grains Natural Foods and Deli is open daily from 10 am – 5 pm – except on movie nights when they will remain open until 9 pm.

It’s summer and most gardeners are doing battle with weeks. But botanist Dr. James A. Duke has a different take on some common weeds: he eats them and boils them for tea. Dr. Duke has written many books on the healing power of plants and herbs, including The Green Pharmacy Herbal Handbook: Your Everyday Reference to the Best Herbs for Healing. Here he shows Wall Street Journal reporter Anne-Marie Chaker his garden and points out common weeds that make good eating. Now, don’t get all fired up by Dr. Duke and run out and start harvesting weeds for dinner. Some are poisonous and you need an expert to guide you. Take a look: