Robert Kenner’s FOOD INC

03Jul09

Forty years ago America’s food was healthier, that’s what Robert Kenner director of the new documentary FOOD INC asserts.

Robert Kenner, a film maker with experience making PBS documentaries, has taken Eric Schlosser’s popular book Fast Food Nation, and reshaped it into a cinematic indictment against the agri-businesses producing the stuff we eat. This is the second time, the source material has been used for a movie. The first attempt was a narrative version and a box office failure. Although not a true rendering of Schlosser’s book, this version is already more successful than the first. As Executive Producer and one of the talking heads in the film, Schlosser’s thesis is front and center.

Using talking heads, archival footage and all the other techniques associated with this genre of film, Robert Kenner and FOOD INC indictment blames on three culprits – corn/soy, fast food and our indifference.

The corn/soy lobby has pushed Congress for massive subsidies. These subsidies have made these products cheaper than others. It is so much easier to undercut competition that way. Coupled with innovative uses, these farm products dominate the supermarket. Even though there may be over 45,000 items cramming your local supermarket’s shelves, too many are infused with high fructose corn syrup or some other derivative from corn or soy. Kenner makes the connection between these products and the diabetes epidemic.

Kenner also connects the dots with the fast food industry which has reshaped the production, especially the meat industry. Forty years ago, the local butcher was a respected community member. Today, the millennial butcher is usually a minority, under paid, over worked and unseen by our communities.

The meat ‘factories’ and the disconnect between production and end use, that would be us eating the food, is dramatic. And that’s the way the agri-businesses like it. They fear, and sponsor legislation to outlaw, full disclosure of their practices.

Robert Kenner’s FOOD INC is a disturbing documentary which everyone who eats American grown or produced food should see. Consumer indifference has allowed some unsavory practices to emerge, including the wholesale buying of Congress.

The film itself is way too crammed with information to be a truly effective film, but what it says and the conversation it should engender, could only save your family’s health.

There is an in-depth podcast conversation with Robert Kenner’s FOOD INC on the Frugal Yankee web site. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/2lx89v

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Tags: Food, Politics