Food, Inc.
Product Description
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli – the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually.
We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms’ Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms’ Joe Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising – and often shocking truths – about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
Product Features
Robert Kenner’s documentary food film demonstrates once again the public’s hunger for a food ethic. As in previous films like Supersize Me and King Corn, the recipe for success is tried and, unfortunately, all too true. A few multi-national conglomerates, with the complicity of our federal regulatory agencies like the FDA and USDA, control a disproportionate amount of our food supply from farm to fork, to the detriment of public health, local farmers, international economies, exploited workers, the environment, and respect for animals. The sole corporate concern is a fat profit. If you are a farmer, you ought to think twice about challenging Monsanto. If you have children, consider that because of their “normal” diet, they have a 1 in 3 change of developing diabetes (1 in 2 if you are a minority). Much of this film is narrated by the understated Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation). Although the film includes some very brave and creative alternatives, it’s been a long time since I left a movie theater feeling so angry and (the real tragedy) so helpless to do much about the problem. Manohla Dargis of the NYTs described Food, Inc. as “one of the scariest films of the year.”
Excellent documentary that lifts the curtain and shows the truth about factory farming. Intelligent, well-researched and well-produced. Highly recommended.
Fully agree with all the favorable reviews here. A huge wake-up call for the American public to get more aware about the food industry. This massive consolidation has been going on in most every major economic sector since 1980 … finance, media, oil/energy, agriculture.
Consumers are not kings … we are pawns. We can still vote with our pocketbooks; but can we do enough quick enough to tame the Monsanto monsters of the world? Stay tuned.
See FOOD INC as often as you can…there’s a lot there. Fields of vital information that have to be cultivated and disseminated.
“Food Inc.” is, more or less, the film version of the 2006 book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”. Not only does it star Michael Pollan, author of the book, but hits almost all of the same points. In the years since the book came out those points have become popularized and somewhat dragged into the mainstream but since they are so important there is no harm in repeating them. Those ideas include imploring farmers not to feed corn to their cows (it causes E. Coli amongst other reasons) and that most of the products we find in our supermarkets are just rearrangements of corn and soy products. And as an added bonus the film provides a jazzy soundtrack and nifty graphics which make for a genuinely more enjoyable experience than reading. The film, like the book, opens with an attack on a worthy target, the fast food industry. From there director Robert Kenner casts a wide net around a seemingly endless list of problems that our addiction to cheap unhealthy food causes. We meet a woman who lost a son to E. Coli after he ate a tainted burger and a man who works to unionize slaughterhouse workers. Companies such as Monsanto and Tyson are put through the ringer, and rightfully so, but those segments are very reminisint of the 2003 film “The Corporation”. Wal Mart, of all things, emerges from the film smelling like a rose because they at least responded when their customers showed a preference for milk that came sans the growth hormones. If Wal Mart is going to be scorned every time they lock their workers inside the store then they should at least be given credit when they do something that actually helps the planet.
Reflecting on his world changing expose “The Jungle” Upton Sinclair said “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Here it felt as though the opposite had happened. Yes, the food situation in this country is sufficiently jacked up but it is important to remember that the goal here is feeding 306 million people. So maybe everyone will have to accept some compromises, but as this film states the US government does not need to be subsidizing bad calories at the expense of good ones. Kenner follows a poor Latino family as they grocery shop to underline the damage this policy does. The whole scene comes off as totally staged but their plight is downright palpable. There is, as always, a dark side and we learn about that here too. The feeding of corn to farm animals drove down the price of meat which is good…right? Having a population that isn’t starving couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. Except then people decided that eating meat five times a day was their God given right as Americans and before you could say Double Bacon Cheeseburger America had an obesity epidemic on their hands. The film does, interestingly, steer clear of the graphic slaughterhouse scenes, but often times those images overpower the point. It is more disturbing to watch the human toll that bad food habits extract. In a heartbreaking scene we watch a deposition tape as a man, who had the audacity not to roll over for Monsanto, is grilled by their executives into giving up the names of his friends. He is trying, and failing, to save his business and it adds to the overall depressed feeling of the film. It does end on a note of cheesy uplift that actually works as it states clearly with on screen text what the problems are and what the viewer can do to help save the world. ***1/4
I have 3 copies to pre-order tickets for family and friends who do not live in a city of art house theater. I, too, by going on a copy to friends that they are "working poor" who are eating junk food. I raised chickens for 40 years ago and sold a dozen eggs for $ 1.00 to $ 1.50 to high. Now, often a dozen eggs $ 1.50 and $ 3.00 organic. Something is wrong with the economics of 40 years, and small-dollar change. I would like to know how it is accountable to the law of "freedom of criticism in the large food companies have been able to happen in this country? How many lawyers are known, that the talk of the "big talk" against corporations hiding? and why not sue the lawyers of mass food corporations? I am glad that this movie does not blame the poor cows and chickens. When you take 75 gallons of crude oil in order to adapt to the meat, the cows are not at fault.