Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. - Movie Review
With Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, Kenner Offers Unpleasant Insight into What we Eat
Jul 3, 2009
Walk into any average supermarket and you'll see some 47, 000-odd products stocked onto shelves and inside refrigerators and freezers. We go about our business, most of us searching for the biggest bargains of the lot without paying much attention to what it is we're buying. Little do we, the everyday consumer, know, a majority of those products we buy have been genetically modified and produced under poorly regulated assembly line-like conditions, and supplied by the biggest four or five multinational corporations, who control what we eat and how it's grown without much concern as to our general health.
Until now, films such as Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me and Richard Linklater's adaptation of Fast Food Nation focused strictly on fast food chains and their unhealthy affects on consumers. But Robert Kenner has taken his approach one giant leap further in Food, Inc., a documentary six-years-in-the-making in which Kenner teams up with Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation") and Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore Dilemma") to lift the veil on the underbelly of our nation's food industry.
Under the veil: From Farm to Factory
What's hidden underneath is grotesque both in nature and in principle. Tomatoes which are genetically modified to stay ripe for months. Massive, poorly regulated factory farms, controlled by the corporations who care more about profit than they do about worker, animal or consumer health. As a result, chickens are cooped up in overcrowded and dark cages and fed to grow fatter quicker, often-times becoming too fat to carry their own weight. Cows and pigs stand belly-deep in feces for extended periods and are fed corn rather than grass, thus, disrupting their digestive systems and making them more susceptible to E Coli and other diseases.
And that doesn't take into account the industrial plants that process the food. Employed largely with illegal immigrants, the workers serve for a certain time and then are “caught” by immigration and taken to prison.
A Hope for the Future in Organics
Yet, while most farmers can't speak out for fear of losing their livelihood (the giant corporations never are hesitant to engage in massive lawsuits), several organic companies such as Stonyfield Farms and Polyface Farms, as well as, other individual farmers have worked to prevent the corporations from taking full control over the industry.
It is through these organic companies that we, too, can prevent total control from occurring. Recent consumer demands led to Wal-Mart's decision to stock organic foods, a rather large step in the fight against corporations.
Kenner argues it doesn't have to end there. Further steps can be made, as long as the consumer is educated when it comes to purchasing food.
So, the next time you're at the supermarket, be sure to pay attention to the packaging and contents. Your body will thank you.
