Boy, what an important topic for a documentary. Of all the topics that have ever been given the documentary treatment, food is the biggest, most important, most fundamental to our very existence. Kudos to the producers for picking this topic and running with it.
We've gone so far off the rails with the production of food in this country. We've given up local production, we've given up sustainable production, we've given up healthful production, and we've given up nutritious production. In true-blue American fashion, the only thing we care about is economical production. Money is king, whether we save it as consumers or whether we make it as businessmen. And yet we're digging our own graves because of it.
"Food, Inc." does a good job putting all the pieces together: how corn subsidies skew our entire food production towards something fundamentally unhealthy; how corporations and their lawyers are effectively drumming independent farmers out of business; how the mass-produced food lobby (and their enablers, the fast-food industry) manipulate our government to keep this horrendous system in place; and how even such seemingly unrelated concepts as Freedom of Speech, the stability of foreign governments, and the country's immigration problems stem from the food policy choices our government has made.
I see a show like this and I think a) I have to give up eating hamburger; and b) how our nation has become so convoluted and so sour that there seemingly isn't a way out of the horrendous pit we've dug for ourselves.
I advise folks to watch this film.
I do, however, have some criticisms.
First, I stated "Food Inc." does a good job putting the pieces together. However, I'm not sure the average Joe will get it, even after seeing it. I grew up in a farming community and worked on them as a boy, plus I pay attention to public policy and all things environmental, so I entered into it with an understanding of the background. I don't think "Food Inc." will resonate to the average layman. There are too many gaps, too many leaps that have to be filled in by the viewer. Such as "why is corn really that bad for us" and "what happens when everything in the food production stream is fed by the same crop". There's a part early in the film where the filmmakers talk about the spread of e coli that I'm sure won't make sense to most folks. Some of the stuff here is pretty heavy yet only gets a quick treatment that relies on audience knowledge. I understand it's only 1-1/2 hours long, and you can't explain everything, but this film still ends up being an elitist film, and that's a shame.
Second, at the end they proclaim the salvation of organic food, but they don't investigate the high probability that the organic food industry will become just that ... an industry. Another corporate-driven market where profit is king and lying to consumers is standard operating procedure. At the end, they say "Kellog bought this organic cereal company, and Colgate bought this organic toothpaste company", but they brush off the notion that these same conglomerates who enabled the destruction of America's current food industry will also adulterate and destroy the products and values that make organics the solution. Then we'll have an elitist documentary in 20 years pondering the failure of the organic movement.
Of course we might all be dead by complications from obesity by that time ...
I give "Food Inc." an 8 out of 10. Solid overall, but a bit elitist and dishonest with itself at the end.
We've gone so far off the rails with the production of food in this country. We've given up local production, we've given up sustainable production, we've given up healthful production, and we've given up nutritious production. In true-blue American fashion, the only thing we care about is economical production. Money is king, whether we save it as consumers or whether we make it as businessmen. And yet we're digging our own graves because of it.
"Food, Inc." does a good job putting all the pieces together: how corn subsidies skew our entire food production towards something fundamentally unhealthy; how corporations and their lawyers are effectively drumming independent farmers out of business; how the mass-produced food lobby (and their enablers, the fast-food industry) manipulate our government to keep this horrendous system in place; and how even such seemingly unrelated concepts as Freedom of Speech, the stability of foreign governments, and the country's immigration problems stem from the food policy choices our government has made.
I see a show like this and I think a) I have to give up eating hamburger; and b) how our nation has become so convoluted and so sour that there seemingly isn't a way out of the horrendous pit we've dug for ourselves.
I advise folks to watch this film.
I do, however, have some criticisms.
First, I stated "Food Inc." does a good job putting the pieces together. However, I'm not sure the average Joe will get it, even after seeing it. I grew up in a farming community and worked on them as a boy, plus I pay attention to public policy and all things environmental, so I entered into it with an understanding of the background. I don't think "Food Inc." will resonate to the average layman. There are too many gaps, too many leaps that have to be filled in by the viewer. Such as "why is corn really that bad for us" and "what happens when everything in the food production stream is fed by the same crop". There's a part early in the film where the filmmakers talk about the spread of e coli that I'm sure won't make sense to most folks. Some of the stuff here is pretty heavy yet only gets a quick treatment that relies on audience knowledge. I understand it's only 1-1/2 hours long, and you can't explain everything, but this film still ends up being an elitist film, and that's a shame.
Second, at the end they proclaim the salvation of organic food, but they don't investigate the high probability that the organic food industry will become just that ... an industry. Another corporate-driven market where profit is king and lying to consumers is standard operating procedure. At the end, they say "Kellog bought this organic cereal company, and Colgate bought this organic toothpaste company", but they brush off the notion that these same conglomerates who enabled the destruction of America's current food industry will also adulterate and destroy the products and values that make organics the solution. Then we'll have an elitist documentary in 20 years pondering the failure of the organic movement.
Of course we might all be dead by complications from obesity by that time ...
I give "Food Inc." an 8 out of 10. Solid overall, but a bit elitist and dishonest with itself at the end.