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Review: Food, Inc.
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I know I should probably pony up the extra fifteen cents a gallon and get the premium gas for my car, but I won't because I know all too well I will have traded in this car for a different one by the time I would realize any of the long-term benefits offered by the good stuff. Judging by the overly worn "regular" buttons on gas pumps throughout the city, I'm probably not alone in my rationale.
The architecture of the human body, on the other hand, is profoundly more complex than the Honda or Chevy parked in the driveway, yet we often treat our organic automatons in much the same manner as the car by fueling it with the cheapest, quickest food we can. Unlike the family SUV, you can't trade in your body for a shiny new model in a few years; you're stuck with it for the rest of your life. It would make sense, therefore, to ingest the best food possible to avoid any of the many preventable future pitfalls caused by poor nutrition. The point of Food, Inc. is to, among other things, make us reconsider eating that Big Mac from the dollar menu while at the same time exposing the process by which we receive the food that we use to fuel ourselves.
If you've read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, you're already familiar with many of the concepts presented in Food, Inc, among them: the correlation of the rise of fast food outlets and the modern grocery store with the spread of farm subsidies and large-scale animal and corn production by a small handful of companies.
Though the average grocery store offers you over 47,000 products, you are deceived into thinking that a slew of manufacturers is behind those multicolored boxes and cans and bags of processed food, when, in fact, just a few corporations make most everything on the shelves. Coupled with the fact that these organizations operate in a less-than-transparent environment and that the number of USDA and FDA inspections have reduced drastically over the years, herein lies the danger for the consumer: you don't know where your food came from, how it was processed or what dangers you may encounter just by eating what is on your plate. This is nothing new. But conveying these ideas visually in the movie theatre makes everything more personal and impossible to ignore.
Through interviews with farmers, hidden-camera footage of meat-processing plants, and the stories of people who are negotiating the bloated bureaucracy in Washington D.C. to keep our food safe, a larger, more nefarious picture behind the shiny packages of food at the hypermart emerges. Why does fast food cost so much less than unprocessed fruits and vegetables at the grocery store? Why do we have so many cases of E. coli and other food borne illnesses? Why aren't producers that repeatedly ship tainted food shut down? Why do farmers grow millions of acres of corn? These are the questions the movie endeavors to answer by comparing the factory system with small-scale farmers who produce crops and animals in the elegant, intuitive way nature had intended, which is the the complete antithesis of the production line mentality demanded by factory farms. Our food ills, the movie argues, would be solved by going back to basics. And, of course, that means we would end up paying a few cents more for a safer, filler-free hamburger.
Food is the commodity to which we are most intimately related. Three times a day we put these consumer goods into our bodies, so we ought know their origins and how the package of chicken thighs or the box of Sugar-Os got to be in the grocery basket. Even if you don't buy into all of the muckraking vignettes in the movie, it is a worthwhile flick because it will force you think twice about what food you purchase and where you purchase it. In other words, caveat emptor.
For all of the horrors and legal shenanigans depicted in the movie (many of which involve St. Louis's own Monsanto), the film does offer hope. Pointing to the fact that even discount behemoth Wal-Mart now carries organic food, the filmmakers believe that we essentially vote for change with our wallets. If we spend our dollars on natural, high-quality food, the farmers (who are often at odds with both the seed manufacturers and food processors), manufacturers and retailers will have to give consumers just that: natural, high-quality food. And I may as well face it: I'm going to have this body for a long time, so I had better start taking care of it....even if it means I have to fork out a little extra green at the farmer's market.
Food, Inc. (PG) is showing at Plaza Frontenac. Click here for current schedule.
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