Today, SSU Summer Associates will be watching Food, Inc., the first film in a series of films they will be watching that deal with food. The following is from the film's website, http://www.foodincmovie.com/:
"In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here."
I've now seen Food Inc. two times. I loved it the first time and I loved it even more when we watched it yesterday. I think it is an important film for anyone who eats to watch. It shines a light on how far off track we have come as a society in the way we produce and consume food. If more people would take the initiative to eat locally, and to reduce the amount of artificial ingredients in their diets, we could really start to see a change in obesity, early onset diabetes, food borne illnesses, and hunger. The film really inspires me to share the knowledge of small scale farming with others so that they might change their own situations for the better and help the planet at the same time.
ReplyDeletethe Film, Food Inc., was somewhat Entertaining, somewhat Informative but lacked, in my opinion, in being Influential. Though the Film was quite clear in what it was trying to achieve, it felt as though it lacked a Conscience and had only been created for the attention of a "superior" audience, those who hand out the awards for Most Dramatic & Underexposed Documentary. Nonetheless, worth a watch but depending on who you are, it may or may not have any type of Impact on an Individual as a Whole.
ReplyDeleteI liked Food, Inc. and feel that it raises important issues. It seemed to me, however, that the film dealt pretty superficially with those issues.
ReplyDeleteI would have to watch again to be sure, but I don't remember them citing many sources for the information provided. They also show some fairly gruesome scenes, and lots of dead or dying animals, during the sections on industrial agriculture, while sticking to green fields and clean, happy, living animals (with the exception of a brief chicken slaughtering scene) during the localized or sustainable agriculture section.
In some ways, this might be appropriate (I'm sure there are more sick animals in factory farms than on small farms), but it felt one-sided to me, a little like propaganda, even if it is propaganda for a cause in which I believe.
Anyway, to sum up, I think Food, Inc. is a great film to get people thinking about issues with our food system but should not be a person's sole source of information on those issues.
- mason
I agree with Mason that the film was a bit one-sided and should not serve as a person's sole source of information on food. However, the film did a good job demonstrating the fact that buying locally grown food definitely promotes a healthier diet because of all of the artificial ingrediants that factory produced food contains.
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