food, inc.: biting the hand that feeds us

Photo Credit: Serious Eats

Independent investigation of the American food system has long been in fashion: Upton Sinclair started the trend over a century ago, and it has been perpetuated by literature like Fast Food Nation and documentaries like Supersize Me. Why is it only ever conducted on an individualistic level? Because it certainly isn't being done by the good old American government.

Robert Kenner's documentary Food, Inc. returns to Sinclair's 1906 political directive: it exposes the United States government for compromising the agricultural, environmental, and social spheres through their actions--or sometimes lack thereof--in food regulation.

The American food system no longer has anything to do with the farmer. It is a business, one that bypasses all sustainable, health, and people-oriented considerations. It has the political sphere in the palm of its grubby, corn-syrup-stained hand, and our government, far from resisting, is dipping its spoon in for a double dose of exploitation.

And that's a lot of cheesy food metaphors.

Food, Inc. acknowledges the gravity of the situation in a way that Supersize Me could not and moves quickly through its gritty facts in a much more riveting fashion than King Corn. It is perpetuated by its relentless relaying of information and the cohesiveness with which it weaves every thread of our society into the giant food basket on which it depends.

The documentary avoids deviating towards pathos related cliches, offering fact after solid fact without trying to tug at our heart strings. We don't hear repetitive, long-winded appeals for the comfort of animals that never really have much of a solid impact. We hear about people. We listen to people and hear the bare details of their stories, and the information is powerful enough on its own without manipulative editing or shots of calf eyes.

We don't even really need to watch the people to be affected. Little screen time is wasted on long shots of people just talking; interviews are condensed into voice-overs with intermittent, effective clips of people's facial expressions, but complementary footage is what we are confronted with.

Straightforward presentation of statistics really lets the numbers stick. Wonderful, simple, and effective art direction packs in the facts and hands them to the audience efficiently and in an easily comprehended package, for after we digest the heavy truth, the bottom line is very comprehensible: Americans are being blinded and exploited by the hand that feeds them.

The questions that revolve around America and the way we eat are often blamed on the problems of the individual: Why does the American eat so much? Why does the American eat so poorly? Why does the American let himself become obese when he knows it has to do with the food he's eating?

Food, Inc. addresses these questions with another question: what can the individual really do against the corporate American food system?

Photo Credit: the Boston Globe

We're so used to pointing fingers at our obese nation--and we've certainly been encouraged to do so--that we forget that no one actually wants to be obese. Perhaps the American becomes obese because he hasn't been told otherwise. Perhaps the American eats poorly because he has no other option.

Maria Andrea Gonzalez's family really had no idea that the fast food could be so horrible; they don't have time to look, they don't have time to delve, and they don't have time to actively resist the constant advertisements for those gaudy fast food chains. They also don't have the means. "When you have only a dollar to spend and you have two kids to feed, either you go to the market and try to find something that's cheap or go straight through a drive-thru and get two small hamburgers for them," she says. "This is what's going to fill them up."

Why do we pair the words "rich" and "beautiful" so often? Because those with money can afford to be pretty: through their clothes, their spa treatments, and luxurious, overpriced healthy food. In the United States, those without money are left to their own devices.

"Why is it that you can buy a double cheeseburger at McDonald's for 99 cents and you can't even get a head of broccoli for 99 cents?," asks Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. "We've skewed our food system to the bad calories. And it's not an accident--the reason that those calories are cheaper is that those are the ones we're heavily subsidizing."

This is just one of a huge spectrum of issues that Food, Inc. addresses. One of the most interesting problems it discusses is the social and political debate on immigration. Why are there so many illegal immigrants from Mexico that we despise the presence of?

Well, we brought them here.

Indirectly, of course, but food corporations are sneaky bastards.

Our industries wiped out Mexican corn fields with our mass-produced, genetically modified corn and left 1.5 million Mexican farmers with no other place to go. The food companies took their jobs in their home country and then drew them into ours in order to exploit their cheap labor and lack of any other options.

Food, Inc. doesn't just make us reconsider the integrity of the FDA and USDA; we receive weighty information and reflections from people we generally (maybe unconsciously, I'll cut us some slack) wouldn't give credit or a second thought to: the cattle herder, the chicken farmer from the South, Latino union directors.

The documentary's manner of presenting its absolutely riveting information is not at all self-righteous. The reality, the evidence, the endless string of facts--all are presented cleanly and unassumingly, which makes it one of the best documentaries I've ever seen and their campaign that much easier to identify with and accept.

But Food, Inc.'s subtlety is also a slight weakness. A stronger message to the consumer would have been preferable; although it does encourage its audience by telling them they have the power to affect a change, it really could have been more forceful: a little less sweet and a little more tart. America obviously needs a push if evidence of the FDA and USDA's failings are being thrown right in our faces year after year.

It is incredible, though disgustingly believable, that this issue is so close to home, something that our two previous administrations so badly abused--and yet was not raised when Obama was running for office. There are so many issues abroad and within the states that it is not receiving all that much talk now, but I do subscribe to the idea that a strong internal foundation spreads its positive aura outward. It affects us all. It is literally at the core of our livelihood, so how many salmonella outbreaks is it going to take? How many more foreign economies are we going to wreak?

"If we put glass walls on all of the mega processing facilities, we would have a different food system in this country," said free range herder Joel Salatin. But even as people like Salatin and the rest of the incredible ensemble behind Food, Inc. construct these glass walls, it's us, the Americans consuming this tainted food, who need to make the effort to look through them.

TIPPING THE SCALE: 8.9 OUT OF TEN

CONTENT (1.8/2.0) AESTHETICS (1.7/2.0) EDITING(1.9/2.0) HUMAN INTEREST (1.9/2.0) SOUNDTRACK (0.7/1.0) WATCHABLE? (0.9/1.0)

Directed by Robert Kenner | Released 06.12.2009 | Participant Media | US | Language(s): English | Run time: 94 min