I love a good documentary and I'm all too willing to believe that corporations are stuffing us with unhealthy food. Food Inc. goes a fair way towards demonstrating this. However, I have a spider sense for propaganda, which is why I don't like Michael Moore. Propaganda emphasizes the feelings of individuals instead of talking about impact, highlights individuals instead of using solid statistics, and lets dangerous implications dangle instead of exploring them.
Thus, we learn that there's far much antibiotics in chicken. Is that bad? I don't doubt it, but how? We learn that there were two e.coli outbreaks on one day of filming. Can we get statistics on how many people are hospitalized or die every year? The film says that half of all minorities born in 2000 or later will get diabetes. Firstly, that's a forecast, not a fact. But it's not sourced. Who's making that forecast? The film mentions in an off-hand way that manure gets into beef, then lets it go. How much?
I personally have no problem with processed food or farmers going out of business because of market forces. Why is it a problem that farmers can't rip off Monsanto's seeds? Don't patents expire in 9 years anyway? The film doesn't connect the dots here and doesn't make a good case.
For issues that I have reason to agree with, such as that crop subsidies are clearly bad, the dots aren't there either. The film stops with saying that corn products underlie most of our foods, without saying how that contributes to poor health.
Ultimately, I think Food Inc. has a very compelling topic but just isn't a very clear documentary, unlike Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth, which get to the point. I feel educated but I also feel a little manipulated. And the final two minutes are way too preachy. It's very much like the film was not made to convince but to play to an audience that's already convinced. Ironically, one of the people interviewed (the president of Stonybrook Farms) mentions the futility of preaching to the choir.
I'll give Food Inc. a 7 out of 10, sort of a wish-I-hadn't-seen-it 6 with a bonus for being on an important topic.
Thus, we learn that there's far much antibiotics in chicken. Is that bad? I don't doubt it, but how? We learn that there were two e.coli outbreaks on one day of filming. Can we get statistics on how many people are hospitalized or die every year? The film says that half of all minorities born in 2000 or later will get diabetes. Firstly, that's a forecast, not a fact. But it's not sourced. Who's making that forecast? The film mentions in an off-hand way that manure gets into beef, then lets it go. How much?
I personally have no problem with processed food or farmers going out of business because of market forces. Why is it a problem that farmers can't rip off Monsanto's seeds? Don't patents expire in 9 years anyway? The film doesn't connect the dots here and doesn't make a good case.
For issues that I have reason to agree with, such as that crop subsidies are clearly bad, the dots aren't there either. The film stops with saying that corn products underlie most of our foods, without saying how that contributes to poor health.
Ultimately, I think Food Inc. has a very compelling topic but just isn't a very clear documentary, unlike Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth, which get to the point. I feel educated but I also feel a little manipulated. And the final two minutes are way too preachy. It's very much like the film was not made to convince but to play to an audience that's already convinced. Ironically, one of the people interviewed (the president of Stonybrook Farms) mentions the futility of preaching to the choir.
I'll give Food Inc. a 7 out of 10, sort of a wish-I-hadn't-seen-it 6 with a bonus for being on an important topic.