Review of The Documentary Film 'Food, Inc'

Food, Inc., an American documentary film, examines the industrial production of meat, grains, and vegetables. The film concludes by claiming the entirety of our food industry is inhumane, and economically and environmentally unsustainable. The film continues to examine today’s industry by exploring the economic and legal powers large food companies have. Thus, recently, the spotlight has been centered on today’s food production

The industrial food system is always looking for greater efficiency, but each step in taking greater efficiency leads to a problem. As seen on the movie, factories are increasing and companies tend to mass produce. But most of the companies in modern industrial food system are just thinking of getting faster, fatter, bigger, and cheaper products.

The documentary, Food Inc., covers some alarming issues about the food industry and brings up good points about how the public can alter their lifestyle to live a healthier life. The food system to my knowledge before watching this movie was that it had been an enormous and cumbersome factor of the 21st century for both the consumer and therefore the regulators. It’s fair to mention that the food system could be a large industry, given that there are ample people. This demand for food requires an advanced system to produce such an oversized demand. The food system has acquired such a complicated system. This includes exploiting and abusing it against nature, and everyone it's encompassed and intended to supply for our species capacity.

I sum up the movie which shows these three current problems facing today’s food industry are: the reformed usage of corn, callous treatment of farmed animals, and false advertisement. With a rapidly growing population, more food is needed. Corn, being cheap and easier to grow, appeals to not only human consumption, but animals as well. Some companies also do not treat animals humanely. Since companies mass produce, they have numerous farm animals. In this case, not all animals are being treated well since they are too many. Also, in order for companies to control the whole system, they changed the way they raised the farm animals just like pig and chicken. For the chickens, they injected many vitamins and medicines for them to grow faster and even larger than the usual chicken. They even redesign the chicken to have large breasts, since they know that it is the part of the chicken that most of the people like to eat. They grow chicken in 49 days compared to the usual 3 month. Fast food restaurants are emerging nowadays. According to the film, it actually outnumbered supermarkets that sell fresh and healthy foods.

One point shown in the movie is that companies even control the farmers. Companies don’t want farmers to talk about everything when they are asked. In the film, most of the farmers that are working on a big company refused to be interviewed or to give specific information. Companies control the farmers in such a way that they cannot divulge anything about the processes in the system, as long as they pay them. While these big companies are earning millions and billions of dollars, they imposed strategies that are not that of advantage for the workers.

One of the most important battles for the consumers to fight, is the battle to know what’s in the food, and how is it grown. Meat, and other products that are genetically modified are not labelled, not only they do not want the consumers what’s in it, but they have managed to make it against the law to criticize their products. This is because there is always a notion that a genetically modified product can cause harm to the consumers. But with the product unlabeled, we are not aware what food are genetically modified and what are not.

The irony is that, the consumers think that they are not that powerful. They think they are just recipients of whatever industry has put there for them to consume. But it is the exact opposite. Companies based their products on customer preferences.

Nevertheless the movie stresses the importance of safe, healthy food. Food, Inc. makes it seem like conventionally produced foods are not safe. The movie makes lots of points – some valid and others very misleading. The movie just shows the downside of conventional foods and set aside the pros of Conventional food production which is also very efficient, which is an important consideration with a growing global population and less resources available to feed people with.

In conjunction with delivering large amounts of food and creating bigger animals in a shorter span of time inevitably means companies will use potentially harmful chemicals. Of course, they will not use them in doses of fatality; however, they use smaller doses but in nearly every product. A final point that really bothered me was the movie’s theme that the agriculture industry is trying to hide how food is produce. Consumers are not aware and in general, are hardly conscientious of what they eat. This unawareness essentially allows corporations to take advantage of the consumer and use cheaper, better, but more harmful ingredients. This is concept is known as false advertising. A major issue in today’s food industry relies in the consumers’ hands as well as the corporations. On one side, consumers do not take self-responsibility and seek out what the ingredients actually are. For example, corn-based syrups have a plethora of counterparts and offshoots that are easily disguisable in the nutrition table of products.