Big. Fast. Cheap.
Those are the three Holy Commandments of U.S. food production.
If you've wondered why people are becoming so fat, why there's an epidemic of diabetes or why there are so many food-related E. coli disasters, please see Food, Inc., an extraordinary documentary about the American food industry.
If you have the stomach for it.
Food, Inc. is 90 minutes of frankly riveting information about what we eat now.
Food production has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000, and all your granny's misgivings about tomatoes and melon in the winter and processed food in general were correct.
These days, what passes for bounty and choice at the supermarket is all an illusion, a dangerous magic show that originated with the fast food giants.
The company that buys the most beef and potatoes in America for their burgers and fries has slowly changed the way food is created, and not for the better.
Four beef packing companies control the whole industry. About the same number control the poultry business. Power is in the hands of a very few companies, and their influence has robbed the FDA and the USDA of any ability to police the industry.
Past attempts to shut down meat packing plants that repeatedly failed microbial testing for salmonella and E. coli 0157h7 -- potential killers both -- failed after meat and poultry producers took the USDA to court.
Food, Inc. will show you lots of gross food facts, such as chickens that grow so fat so fast that they cannot walk, or cows on feed lots ankle deep in their own manure, or meat parts dunked in a chemical bath for consumer protection. Yuck.
But the movie has much bigger fish to fry, namely, what else the food industry yields in the way of corruption and conspiracy.
The chicken farmer who tells the truth loses her contract, for example.
The woman whose toddler died from E. coli contaminated food can't say on-camera what she personally eats now, because she'll be sued.
You're not allowed to know if the food you're eating contains genetically modified ingredients.
And various people would rather you didn't know how the food industry uses and abuses illegal immigrants to keep their production lines moving along.
The corporations with a vested interest in public ignorance have the ties to government and the finances required to squash their opponents via the legal system.
It's all pretty terrifying.
But Food, Inc. also provides some answers, and makes it clear that consumers get to vote three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
People have far more power to change this mess than they realize.
The movie illustrates the point with Walmart executives explaining why their stores now stock organic yogurt: Because their shoppers demanded it.
Food, Inc. has input from such foodies as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and interviews with brave and articulate farmers and food workers.
The filmmakers tried to get reps from such food giants as Monsanto, Tyson, Perdue and Smithfield on camera, but they all declined to be interviewed.
See you at the farmer's market.
(This film is rated PG
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