You'll never look at dinner the same way again
The current method of raw food production is largely a response to the growth of the fast food industry since the 1950s. The production of food overall has more drastically changed since that time than the several thousand years prior. Controlled primarily by a handful of multinational corporations, the global food production business - with an emphasis on the business - has as its unwritten goals production of large quantities of food at low direct inputs (most often subsidized) resulting in enormous profits, which in turn results in greater control of the global supply of food sources within these few companies. Health and safety (of the food itself, of the animals produced themselves, of the workers on the assembly lines, and of the consumers actually eating the food) are often overlooked by the companies, and are often overlooked by government in an effort to provide cheap food regardless of these negative consequences. Many of the changes are based on advancements in science and technology, but often have negative side effects. The answer that the companies have come up with is to throw more science at the problems to bandage the issues but not the root causes. The global food supply may be in crisis with lack of biodiversity, but can be changed on the demand side of the equation.
Genre(s): Documentary
Runtime: 94 minutes
Rating: 8.3/10 (824 votes)
Release Date: 7 September 2008
Country: USA
Languages: English
Company: Participant Media
Sound: Dolby Digital
MPAA: Rated PG for some thematic material and disturbing images.
Director(s): Robert Kenner
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Producer(s):
Sascha Goldhor - associate producer
Robert Kenner - producer
Richard Pearce - co-producer
Elise Pearlstein - producer
William Pohlad - executive producer
Jay Redmond - associate producer
Melissa Robledo - co-producer
Eric Schlosser - co-producer
Robin Schorr - executive producer
Jeff Skoll - executive producer
Diane Weyermann - executive producer
Cast:
Michael Pollan - Himself
Eric Schlosser - Himself
Music: Mark Adler
Sascha Goldhor - associate producer
Robert Kenner - producer
Richard Pearce - co-producer
Elise Pearlstein - producer
William Pohlad - executive producer
Jay Redmond - associate producer
Melissa Robledo - co-producer
Eric Schlosser - co-producer
Robin Schorr - executive producer
Jeff Skoll - executive producer
Diane Weyermann - executive producer
Cast:
Michael Pollan - Himself
Eric Schlosser - Himself
Music: Mark Adler
Posted on: June 1, 2009
Posted in: Documentary
June 19th, 2009
I went into this hoping to learn some shocking secret to the foodindustry that would change my mind about what I ate. Instead, I got alightweight group of shots of corporate buildings or industrialproduction that did not expose anything. Yes, it's true, there arelarge processing companies that process a lot of food. So what??? Thesuggestion here is that because they are big, something evil must belurking behind those doors. But no such evidence is provided. The worstthey could come up with were subtitles that said "such and such acompany refused to grant us an interview!" Wooooooooo! Howincriminating. The fact is, there is no real shocking truth revealed bythis film about the food industry. In fact, there own arguments supportthe processors. For example, they site the well known instance a coupledecades ago about the child that died from a Jack In The Box hamburger.One instance. Given the billions of portions of beef served since then,and not another instance of this has occurred, I would argue the foodindustry has done a great job of containing that risk. Additionally,they clearly hide facts about the Monsanto case, showing selectedsingle sided arguments, without allowing Monsanto to voice their sideof the story. They attempt to make a farmer who was being prosecuted byMonsanto look like a victim, showing only selected clips of histestimony in court, and not Monsanto's side. I'd expect at least to letthem speak and tear them apart if they didn't have a point, but toexclude the other sides perspective makes the whole movie seem like acharade. At the end, all I learned was that big companies control theprocessing and feed animals a lot of corn. I'm one of them, because Ienjoyed my popcorn throughout this movie, but not the fact that I spent$13 to see it. A waste of time.
June 20th, 2009
The message of 'Food, Inc.' is that most of what Americans now eat isproduced by a handful of highly centralized mega-businesses,and thatthis situation is detrimental to health, environment, even our veryhumanity. The ugly facts of animal mistreatment, food contamination,and government collusion are covered up by a secretive industry thatwouldn't talk to the filmmakers or let the interiors of their chickenfarms, cattle ranches, slaughterhouses, and meatpacking plants befilmed.
Informed by the voices and outlook of bestseller authors Eric Schlosser('Fast Food Nation') and Michael Pollen ('The Omnivore's Dilemma'),this new film is an exposé that offers some hope that things can bemade better through grassroots efforts. True, Kenner points out,Monsanto, Smithfield, Perdue, et al. are rich and powerful. But so werethe tobacco companies, and if Philip Morris and Reynolds could befought successfully, so can the food industry. The fact that the vastWalmart is switching to organic foods because customers want them showspeople vote effectively with their pocketbooks every time they buy ameal.
Other documentaries have covered this ground before. The 2008 Frenchdocumentary 'The World According to Monsanto' (2008) focused on howthat company, with government support, monopolizes seed planting, andDeborah Koons' 2004 'The Future of Food' went over similar ground.Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar's sweeping 2003 film 'The Corporation'(2003) touched on Monsanto's monopoly too. In more general terms, theominous, narration-free German documentary 'Our Daily Bread' (NikolausGeyrhalter, 2003) delivered 'Food, Inc.'s' message about dehumanizedfactory-style food production with a European focus. RichardLinklater's 2006 'Fast Food Nation' grew out of Schlosser's book abouthow bad and disgusting American fast food is and how it undermines thehealth. These are all good films, and there are and will be lots more.As this new film mentions, exploitation and malpractice in the meatindustry were exposed as far back as Upton Sinclair's 1906 muckrakingbook, 'The Jungle.'
'Food, Inc.' is a populist and practical film that speaks with thevoices of farmers, advocates, and journalists, and focuses on food,what's wrong with it, and what we can do about it. Kenner offers lotsof practical information and appeals to everyday people. The film goesback to the Fifties to show how the rise of fast food contributed tocentralized, less diverse American food production. MacDonald's nowmuch of the chicken, beef, potatoes, and many other foods produced inthe country. The film explains that only a handful of companies controlnot only most of the beef, pork, chicken, and corn produced in the USbut most other food products as well. Moreover not only is corn themajor feed given to food animals, but a surprising amount of the tensof thousands of products sold at today's supermarket — that packagedjunk racked in the center of the store that Atkins and now Pollen havetold us to avoid, are also derived from corn. Because of the waycertain food products have government support, hamburgers are cheaperthan fresh vegetables. Kenner focuses on a low-income Orozcos who bothwork and feel forced to rely on fast food meals because they fill themand their kids more economically than fresh produce bought at themarket.
The new industry has developed chickens that grow bigger faster withmore breast meat. They're kept in closed dark pens. The story is thesame for all these poor mass produced critters, crammed together ingreat numbers, filled with antibiotics, deformed, suffering, ankle deepin their own excrement, brutally killed. The film has good footage ofthe big southern meat producer, Smithfield, showing how the newmega-food industry feeds off of exploited low-wage illegal immigrantswho it treats as expendable, just like the animals.
An important spokesman in 'Food, Inc.' is an organic farmer (you couldjust say a stubbornly old-fashioned one) called Joel Salatin ofPolyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, who's also an author, though themovie doesn't mention his books. His cattle are grass-fed and watchingthem, we realize that's the way nature meant them to be. They roamsfree, living a healthy life, trimming back the grass while fertilizingit so it will grow back. Cattle weren't meant to live on corn, anddoing so has led to infection. The industry solution to such problemsis not to change back to earlier methods, but to add more chemicals.They're doing crazy things like adding bleach to hamburger filler tokeep the burgers from being poison.
It's hard to keep a balance in such a documentary but Kenner tries.That Hispanic family is important. Slow food and organics have been athing of the rich, as their dilemma illustrates. There could be morefocus on everyday people and their difficult daily choices. The Walmartstory is important too: Walmart customers are everyday people. It'seasy enough for well heeled families to buy boutique produce atfarmer's markets. Average Joes don't always have the time or the moneyfor that. Also important is Barbara Kowalcyk, who works in Washingtonwith her mother as an advocate for stricter laws. Her 2 1/2-year-oldson Kevin died in 12 days from a virulent form of E. coli after eatinga hamburger on vacation. She wants not sympathy but control of anindifferent industry. Carole Morison is another vivid voice: she is asouthern chicken farmer who lost her contract with Perdue for refusingto switch to dark enclosed tunnel chicken coops, the latest in a seriesof enforced "improvements" that lead to more production at the cost ofmore cruelty. She also explains how the farmers in thrall to these bigcompanies are kept in debt like indentured servants.
Armed with witty, clear graphics and ironically bright color, 'Food,Inc.' has a chance of gaining more converts to "slow," organic, localfood and opponents to crooked food regulation and monopolisticindustry. This seems one of the most balanced and humane treatments ofthe subject yet.
June 21st, 2009
Food for thought and social activism.
In the film Matrix the plugged into the system human bodies were fedthrough the pipes the liquefied remnants of the dead ones.
Of course it would be a big leap and stretch to compare with it theproducts the corporations create to feed the population, but it makesyou think and see the metaphorical analogy.
The most valuable in this film is the counter-positioning of the humanvs. dehumanizing.
The whole film leads to the suggestions at the end. Social activism andvoting through the cash register is the main point of this importantdocumentary.
The comment by "williamzim2000" seems appallingly simpleton like, butthe sophisticated one by "rasecz" misses the above point entirely aswell.
June 24th, 2009
This is one of those films that could have been excellent, but justwasn't. It was almost there, but then they decided to send an array ofpreachy messages just before the end credits, which pretty much angeredme. I don't like movies that tell me what to do or how to do it. Idon't mind liberal films, just don't talk down to me like I'm a child.(With that said, conservatives anger me off as well.)
Food, Inc. is about how our food industry pretty much screws us andsmaller food companies over, to keep it simple. It's first half isactually very fun and insightful to watch. After that, the seeminglyforever lasting second half clipped along at a snail's pace and kept usin the dark about certain issues that surfaced, but weren't explored.
In a way, it's important. It's important to know what's in your foodand how it gets there and what happens in the process. What isn'timportant (nor is it necessary) to try to influence the viewer withwords telling us what we should do. In my eyes, that's just not a goodthing to do in a film. The glacially slow second half would have beenforgivable if they hadn't done what they did just before the endcredits. Other than that, see this film. You might learn something.
June 26th, 2009
Took my little bro to this movie – he usually doesn't give a crappeabout ANYTHING.
But he was TOTALLY GADSMACKED by this movie, and THAT says A lot. Heand so many of his peers don't give a S*** about much of anything,ESPECIALLY their diet.
I dare say he's CHANGING NOW.
This documentary presents so much information we think we already heardin a brilliant, revealing EYE-OPENING way. The stories are completelyMESMERIZING and compelling. You will not be able to turn away.
The illogic of those GMO "food" companies in power will make your skincrawl. They DON'T CARE a WHIT about YOU. Just the bucks you can givethem, and the lusty POWER of dominion over you.
The AMAZING thing is THIS – it wouldn't surprise me AT ALL if the KIDSof these Monsanto execs and power lawyers EAT ORGANIC HEALTHY DELICIOUSstuff while they shove crappe down your throat.
Just a thought. I doubt they raise THEIR kids on chem-a-crap burgersfrom sick steers.
What do YOU think? SUFFICE it to say, yeah a bit peeved so apologies…
GO SEE THIS MOVIE – you will be SO GLAD you did. And mebbe if you'relucky, will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
FOR THE BETTER.
And when you're feeling better, also go and see the movie "HOME." It'sa visually STUNNING and magnificent movie and will take your breathaway.