What are you really eating? Who grew it, and where? What inputs went into it? How many people were exploited to bring it to your dinner plate? What are those ingredients on the back? What is sustainable agriculture? What is the face of American industrial food production?
Do you even care? Maybe not, but if you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll probably want to take a look.
Food, Inc., produced by Robert Kenner, featuring interviews with Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Botany of Desire, In Defence of Food), was nominated for an Academy Award for “best documentary feature.” That means it’s pretty good.
This movie will take you from the inside of your supermarket, to the genetically modified soybean fields of middle America, to the twisted multi-national corporate influences over the FDA, to food safety issues and bills, to the countless corn-derived additives in processed food, to worker safety issues and exploitation… to the realization that there’s a lot going on in food production about which we are not very aware. The current food production system likes it that way.
But don’t feel too depressed… the movie has an upswing. Sustainable agricultural methods and organic food production are booming. Organic is the fastest growing section of your supermarket. You have control. You vote with your dollars.
Capitalism is not ashamed to follow your dollar, and if you demand better food, the system will deliver it.
