Movie Recommendation - Food, Inc.

Food, Inc., a new documentary exploring the American food industry, was just released on DVD yesterday. I have been anticipating the release of this movie for months and made sure we got the one and only copy at our video store yesterday.

I thought the movie was very well-made and inspiring. As with any documentary, there were a few parts that were a bit too "Michael Moore" for me - for example, making a political point as a cow is being tortured in the background - but for the most part I felt it was informative.

The documentary covers pretty much every aspect of our nation's food industry - labeling, health issues, political issues, big business, the organic sector, etc. - with the overall goal of showing you exactly how your food gets to your grocery store.

I have to warn you though, some of the footage is graphic and disturbing, especially the scenes on the chicken farms and in the slaughterhouses. I also found footage from the food processing plants where they showed how the filler that is in 70% of store-bought ground beef is bathed in ammonia to kill e-coli equally horrifying.

There was only one part of the movie that I found to be completely hypocritical and worthy of a huge eyeroll from me, and that was when they were interviewing Gary Hirshberg from Stonyfield Farms. They showed how Gary started out in the industry with the intention of creating organic, wholesome food for people, probably while living out of a Volkswagen bus. Then as Gary goes on bashing capitalism over and over again, he then shows us how his little organic company has now been bought by Dannon yogurts and is sold in WalMart stores across the nation. I'm pretty sure capitalism has been good to him.

But then they showed an organic farmer named Joel Salatin, who treats his animals with care and has the health of his customers at the top of his list of priorities. He says that when you start thinking too big and increasing the size of your food operations, you start sacrificing the integrity of your product, and the health of your customers.

For me, this information couldn't have come at a more relevant time, as yesterday our state (Ohio) just voted on and passed an issue allowing an amendment to our Constitution, creating a board of industry professionals to determine best management practices for our state. Our state will now have farmers, college professors, elected officials, and others who are in bed with these huge corporations making decisions about what is best for our health and safety when it comes to our food (although I'm sure the bottom line will be their true priority).

So the point of the documentary, and the inspiring part for me, was the statement at the very end of the film - you have the ability to vote on these issues three times a day, as you are purchasing, preparing and eating your meals. You can choose to support these huge corporate farmers, who pollute the environment, treat their animals with absolutely no respect, exploit their workers, and focus on their bottom line (instead of your health) OR you can "vote" for safe, local, fresh foods from farmers like Joel Salatin.

In Ohio yesterday, my vote may not have mattered, since an overwhelming majority of citizens decided to support corporate farmers, but I will continue to vote each and every day as I prepare healthy meals for my family and choose to only spend our hard-earned dollars supporting people who value life the same way we do.

Learn more about what happened in Ohio with Issue 2 here.