In the same "open your eyes" type documentary style as "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices", "The Corporation", and "An Inconvenient Truth", Food, Inc hits a little closer to home. It seems as revealing as if you were adopted because food is such a personal part of everyday life. This movie scared me, but I still ate during it. The only problem I had with the movie is it paints a dark picture of the food industry but does not really offer ways to avoid it, other than read labels and buy organic. Other than that, Food, Inc works on many levels. Better treatment for the animals. Better treatment for the farmers. Less subsidies to build big business, and the one that was biggest to me, healthier food for our kids. Food, Inc is a movie everyone should see although it doesn't "entertain" in the traditional sense. 7/10
Monday, January 11, 2010
Food, Inc
In the same "open your eyes" type documentary style as "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices", "The Corporation", and "An Inconvenient Truth", Food, Inc hits a little closer to home. It seems as revealing as if you were adopted because food is such a personal part of everyday life. This movie scared me, but I still ate during it. The only problem I had with the movie is it paints a dark picture of the food industry but does not really offer ways to avoid it, other than read labels and buy organic. Other than that, Food, Inc works on many levels. Better treatment for the animals. Better treatment for the farmers. Less subsidies to build big business, and the one that was biggest to me, healthier food for our kids. Food, Inc is a movie everyone should see although it doesn't "entertain" in the traditional sense. 7/10
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A score 8 for me. Combined with SuperSize Me, Korn King and Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation, this picture has helped me better understand the problems with our food production system and the resulting obesity epidemic. Quality is consistently sacrificed for lower food prices. We never see these decisions because the average consumer is completely out of the food production loop (except Mom who's got the right idea although she needs chickens so she can say a little prayer of thanksgiving prior to cutting their heads off). The most poignant points from the movie were 1) how aggressively the food companies squeeze profits and fight litigation, b) the "fired" chicken farmer because she could not watch her birds live their lives 100% indoors, and c) the extremes that the companies will got to guarantee that corn-fed cattle who wallow in their own manure all day have no signs of e-coli but they will not do the simple healthy solution of letting the cattle graze openly rather than on much cheaper corn. The irony of the situation just floors me. I still remember one scene from King Corn where the growers get to taste their Iowa corn that they plan to sell for corn syrup. Although it was obviously staged, they took a bite and spit it out immediately. Apparently almost 100% of the corn grown in Iowa is genetically engineered for corn syrup and not fit for human consumption. I try to remember that every time I drive along the farm belt and look at all of the waving ears of corn...looks yummy but tastes yucky.
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