With the amount of food recalls seeming to grown annually, it is easy to feel that our food system in the US is broken, and after watching the 94 minute documentary Food, Inc., you learn that it truly is.
From the opening shots of the supermarket, we begin to learn how corn and the fast food industry have changed the way Americans both grow and eat food. While the movie repeats many of the facts from Michael Pollan's informative book, In Defense of Food, the facts are just as interesting the second time around. Food, Inc. also delves deeper into the chemical giant Monsanto and its role in destroying the family farm from the seeds on up. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation shares the narrator role with Pollan, and these two tear down the food industrial food system starting with corn and moving quickly to the meat industry. The film is peppered with interviews with farmers — chicken, corn, and soy — whose lives have been dramatically altered by multinational corporations' interest in commanding the food chain. The film is disturbing to say the least, but it ends with tales from Polyface farm, a family operation that makes food seem wholesome again. I left the theater charged up to make changes not only in my daily diet, but to petition the government to give power back to their regulatory arms, the USDA and FDA, to help keep our food supply safe. The Food, Inc. website has a petition to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. After watching this documentary, you may never look at food the same way again.
Check out the trailer after the break.
Have you seen the movie? If so what did you think?
Hugo Boss
Pedro Garcia
black'Up
I read the book and it was fantastic. I'm excited to see the movie!
1I'm glad this kind of stuff is finally getting the public attention that it deserves!!
2My friend and I tried to see it twice already and it was sold out both times. Going to try again this week!
3Really hoping that this film stimulates change in our agricultural system more than Fast Food Nation. On food, and so many other issues that food is inherently tied to (i.e. climate change, sustainable energy, healthcare, human rights, non-human animal well fair, &c.), change needs to happen to get us out of our archaic mode of "destructive industry" in which we reap exponential benefits and turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the subtle but equal costs of our fast and easy lifestyles. As Michael Pollan, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and so many of the heroes of agricultural reform have been saying, we need to move away from the centralized factory farms and promote regional agriculture, do away with our supermarket culture and reconnect with out food and our farmers through farmer's markets, incorporate some restraint in our lives and consume food in a way that doesn't condemn our children and grandchildren to what will be a wasteland if we don't change our habits and act with rationality and respect for the ecology in which we live.
Another film that deserves to be getting the attention that Food, Inc. is getting is End of the Line which has been making a huge impact globally, exposing the dire situation the world's current aquacultural practices are entrenching.
4can't wait to see this - i hope it comes to our small town!
5This is propaganda at its finest! If you believe you can't or won't get e. coli or salmonella or one of over a hundred foodborne illnesses from homegrown or organic foods, you are WRONG! I hope you all know that lines that run/process organic foods can not be cleaned as well as lines that aren't used for organics. Something that caught my eye in the organics aisle shown in this trailer: Stonyfield Farms Yogurt, who has in the past few years had its share of recalls, food contaminated with sanitizer to glass shards found in the yogurt. Instead of changing your life and going totally organic/local, try washing your food well and cooking to the recommended temperatures. Otherwise, buy you foods from the peak times, try your hand at canning it yourself, and hope and pray to God you don't die from botulism poisoning because you screwed up the process.
Check this out: http://killfile.newsvine.com/_news/2008/06/11/1562907-forget-local-and-o...
6This movie and book are propaganda at its finest. I hope and pray to God that you all don't run out and buy only local/organic foods with the hope you'll never get sick from them. The truth of the matter is that a big portion of the foods recalled this past year have been organics. One thing that caught my eye in the trailer is Stonyfield Farms yogurt, which has had more than its share of recalls, including one for contamination of food with a sanitizer and glass shards found in the yogurt.
There are a lot of rules one must follow to have their products labelled organic, and one of those is the cleaning methods used on the lines and products, or should I say the lack of cleaning? But, if you want to buy only organic or local foods, go ahead and good luck with that. You can get salmonella or e. coli just as easily, if not more easily from organics/local foods, than from your regular grocery shelf products. If you opt to go the local way and plan on canning, please don't screw it up; many folks have died from botulism due to improper canning procedures. Best thing to do as far as I'm concerned is wash your food properly and cook it to the recommended temperature. It's really the only thing you can do!
BTW: Don't wash the outside of your eggs if you buy organic/local and there's some residue on them, it allows salmonella to seep inside. Rub them with a dry cloth instead. Cheers!
7Read this instead: (Not my site)killfile.newsvine.com/_news/2008/06/11/1562907-forget-local-and-organic-food-recalls-mean-safer-food
8Yeah I agree with above poster, this docu-propaganda is not a complete arguement not to mention the share of dangers with labled "organic" food not to mention some of the COMPANIES supporting this documentary are out there to sell a product to make money and doing everything they can to get the govt. on their side to kill the competition.
9oh please! ths film advocates locally grown, sustainable food. not all organics are created equal. eggs from chickens that are not from factory farms are proven to have less of a chance of having salmonella. it is a great documentary and it is well over due.
10While it is possible to get food-borne illnesses from organic foods, the chances are slim due to the strict standards required in order to become organically certified. One advantage to buying local food is that you know who grew it - it isn't coming from a foreign country and being shipped thousands of miles to end up on your table. Organic food is not a new trend, though it has really taken off in the last few years. All of our produce was organic prior to WW2 and has been available as an alternative in increasing amounts thereafter.
To Anonymous FoodScienceG - the article you linked to is an Opinion piece, not a research piece. There are no links to sources used for the writing. I understand the gist of what the author was trying to get across, but it hardly dispels the truths of the organic industry.
A great website to check out is the Organic Consumers Association www.organicconsumers.org - which is targeted to organic consumers but reports about flaws in the organic industry as well as conventional food production. And, if you're concerned about buying food locally, you can check out LocalHarvest.org where you can find all kinds of local resources by just typing in your zip code. They are a directory of farmers, CSAs, farmer's markets, etc... offering both conventional and organic farming practices.
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