This is a review I wrote on Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. as an assignment for my Fall 2011class "Public Health in Film and Media".
Don’t let the name fool you. Unlike Supersize Me, Food, Inc. is not another documentary that criticizes America’s unhealthy fast food chains. Food, Inc.deals with what Americans are buying in their supermarkets, cooking in their homes and serving to their families. It tackles the problem of the American food culture from its very root: Where does the food come from?
In the journey for the search of an ultimate answer, the issue gets more complex as more questions are introduced throughout the film. How is the food produced? Does it come from a farm with green pasture and a red barn like the one in the product’s advertisements? Why can’t we understand the “Nutrition Facts” on the label? Just because it’s lying on supermarket shelves, is it really safe to eat?
And probably the scariest questions of all: If we ever learn all these scientific names for carbs, sugars, fats and proteins, can we really understand what our food is made of? Is the information on the label reliable? Are food regulation agencies trustworthy?
Unfortunately, evidence has shown that they are not.
Food, Inc. shows us that approximately 10 billion animals (chickens, cattle, hogs, ducks, turkeys, lambs and sheep) are raised and killed in the US annually. Nearly all of them are raised on factory farms under unwholesome, inhumane and unsanitary conditions that facilitate contamination and the spread of diseases among the animals’ filthy and overcrowded pens.
Factory farm operators typically feed these animals with antibiotics, growth hormones and starchy grains to promote their growth and keep the overall costs of production low. But the way in which these animals are fed directly affects the quality and safety of the meat and diary products we consume.
In addition to being unsafe to our food system, these industrial farms are also dangerous for their workers, embrace animal cruelty, pollute surrounding communities, and contribute significantly to global warming, due to greenhouse emissions for food transportations across the country and even the world.
And what about vegetables and grains? Well, Food, Inc. also shows how some of our most important staple foods and produce have been fundamentally altered and genetically engineered in order to resist pesticides. They have also been injected with preservatives, in order to last longer. Is it really safe to have them at our supermarkets and kitchens, along with meat and milk produced from cloned livestock?
What have food regulation agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture done? Nothing. Food, Inc. shows us that the chairmen from these agencies used to work for these big food industries, which were reluctant to show their sides of the story in the film.
In this polemic context, Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. exposes America’s industrialized food system and its broad effects on the American society, which range from consumer health and environment sustainability to issues deeply related to the American economy, public policy and politics. The film was released on 2008, but its material goes back to the extensive research of investigative journalists Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, respective authors of the best sellers “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal” (2001) and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”(2006).
The film has received full support from the so called “organic food movement” that has grown in America during the past decade, especially among the young, the educated and the upper-middle class. Non-profit organizations are trying to expand the healthy eating movement to the lower classes, which can’t afford to buy and cook naturally grown products since industrialized food is cheaper, by promoting community supported agriculture programs.
As Eric Schlosser says on the movie companion book, “the food industry is, by far, the most important industry in every society. Without it, you can’t have any other industry. All the others depend on people being able to eat.” The nation’s system of food production concerns the people’s most basic need, and for this reason, its business practices have a profound impact on society and public health.
In Food, Inc. we meet Barbara Kowalcyk, whose 2 year old son, Kevin, died from E.coli poisoning after eating a hamburger. The movie showed that data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from foodborne illnesses.
And the issue of safe and healthy eating extends to a much larger scale. Some people blame economics for bad eating habits that a lot of Americans practice, but when looking at the long-term list of harms, cheap food is much too expensive. Other CDC data from the movie estimates that about one third of the Americans born on the year 2000 will develop diabetes as a result of a high calorie, sugar laden processed foods diet and lack of exercise, which results in larger bills for treating heart diseases, obesity and diabetes. Outside of consumption, cancers, autism and neurological disorders are associated with the use of pesticides amongst low paid farm workers and their communities. This not only reduces labor productivity in the long run, but most of these workers are also illegal immigrants with no health insurance or social security, which constitutes a delicate human rights issue.
In this sense, this is the industry that needs to be regulated the most, because it determines the health of the consumers who eat its products, the health of the workers who make its products, the health of the environment, animal welfare, the sustainability of the economy that trades its products, and so much more.
Having lived in Venezuela for my entire life, when I first came to study in the United States I used to think that American supermarkets were the best. So much food and so many different kinds of products was exciting and overwhelming. Back at home we only had one kind of milk, and here I can choose from skim, to half and half, two percent, soy, vitamin D, and the list goes on. Vegetables come already cut and ready to cook, and so does the meat; there is no need to go to the fruit market or the butcher’s. Soup is sold in cans, and it is microwaveable. And so are the Thai noodles, pesto pasta, chicken potpie and even rice!
But my perspective on this “food heaven” completely changed after watchingFood, Inc. and researching more on the American food industry. I might only have one kind of milk back home, but at least I know that it doesn’t have any artificial grown hormones like rBGH. I might have to cut and wash my tomatoes, but at least they are fresh and free from preservatives. I might have to actually grind and marinate the meat when I make burgers back at home, but that’s not much of a problem if it’s keeping me from getting an E. coli infection from a frozen patty.
It is a good thing that the food movement in America is continuously growing, especially among the young. The public should keep on working along with the food industries and the government to get healthy foods on the supermarket shelves at the same prices at which unhealthy fast foods are sold on the drives through.
A change in the society’s mentality is the key to achieve this ultimate goal. Initiatives for community gardens and local farmers markets should be supported, making healthy foods more available in low-income neighborhoods; and at the same time, industrial foods should be made more expensive by ensuring that they reflect their true costs to society. Education in schools and communities must raise public awareness on how important it is to eat healthy and demand for laws that ensure food regulation, animal welfare and environmental sustainability, forcing the big corporations that control the food production system to embrace healthier, more environmental friendly, and still profitable, business practices.
