Putting Food On the Table

Ever feel like someone’s trying to fatten you up, Hansel and Gretel style? You know, those times, for example, when you turn off the highway onto a road that funnels you between rows of fast food restaurants, where your only meal options seem to be greasy chicken, greasy pizza, greasy hamburgers or The Other Guy’s greasy hamburgers. It’s the same with food courts and buffets. Even since I saw Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste – about extra-terrestrial baddies turning people into fast food – I imagine an alien race fattening us up, en masse, so they can harvest us when we’ve finally tipped the scales enough for their space butchers.

The truth, of course, is more frightening: we’re doing it to ourselves. We’ve been trained to value food that’s cheap, fast, in large portions and riddled with salt, sugar and fat. Morgan Spurlock explored this reality in Super-Size Me, but he was only telling part of the story. Spurlock, in the most masochistic way possible, showed us the results of eating such crap; Food Inc. follows the food back to its sources, to tell the larger story or where the food we eat – not only fast food – comes from.

When I say we, I should clarify that it’s an American doc, so while there are major similarities, I imagine there are some significant difference in the way our food goes from field to face. At least I freakin’ hope so…

The film very thoroughly shows us how the big industry got so big; how those few controlling companies streamlined the production process through the use of chemicals, genetic engineering and cheap labour; how they gained power and influence with government in order to entrench themselves and put profit over public health and safety. There’s an interview with a lobbyist whose three-year suffered a horrible death from ecoli poisoning in a tainted hamburger and she’s now battling congress to pass a bill that would give back power to the Food and Drug Administration to shut down meat plants with repeated violations. Kenner also talks to farmers who are controlled, pressured and, apparently, bullied by multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto, which has a chokehold on seed processing. There’s a look at not only the horrifying conditions under which livestock are cared for, but also a talk with a union organizer trying to get humane conditions for the humans working at meat packing plants.

But Kenner also talks to the everyman farmers who are just trying to make a living by following the industry demands and trying to produce food at cheaper and cheaper costs in order to compete. He spends time with lab techs who, for better or worse, explain the ins and outs of chemical engineering. And he visits poor families who – at the risk of diabetes – subsist on fast food because it’s cheaper to buy a burger than a head of broccoli.

There a ton of really eye opening info (food for thought – hardy har ), but Food Inc. is also very well structured and paced, and rounded out with colourful personalities who keep the film engaging. The  best of the bunch is the organic farmer who, despite his hayseed straw hat and overalls, is incredibly articulate, observant and entertaining as he explains why organic farming is the solution to the toxic status quo (and why it's important that pigs are free to engage in their "essential pigness"). There’s also Gary Hirshberg, the man behind Stonyfield, one of the biggest organic farm companies, who explains why it’s important to get into Wal-Mart if you really wanna affect change. The best thing that Food Inc. does is take a complex issue and examine it thoughtfully without being a Michael Moore-style  polemic.

That said, there’s a reason all of the huge companies involved in the livestock and other farming industries declined to be interviewed for the movie: it’s damning. Yet, it’s also hopeful, showing us solutions and alternatives, with a reminder that, big business is not untouchable. Like the once mighty Big Tobacco companies, Big Food companies can be taken to task, as well.

I switched to eating organic a few years ago and it was one of the best lifestyle choices I’ve ever made. In general the food tastes better (milk, meat and produce in particular), I’m forced to eat fresher (no preservatives!) and, after reading up on the chemicals, hormones, and other weird-ass things that goes into so many items, I’m eating a lot healthier. Of course, it’s more expensive, and not everyone can afford it; I sacrifice other things to eat organic.

As far as your cinematic diet is concerned, Food Inc. should be a vital addition to it because the most important point that it makes, and the reason to watch it whether you’re interested in organic food or not, is the very simple idea that everyone has the right to know where their food comes from.

Well, except people who eat Soylent Green; they’re better off not knowing.

-Dave Alexander