Food, Inc. (2008)

Directed by: Robert Kenner

I'm not sure if Food, Inc,'s primary objective is to scare its audience or to inform it. When its doing the latter, the film is effective and interesting. While, for me, I wasn't learned a lot of new information, it is information everyone should hear and understand fully. When the film attempts to scare us, its much less effective and across preachy and frustrating, more like the Best Documentary Oscar winner, The Cove, an incredibly overrated film that gave its audience no credit at all.

Food, Inc. lets us know what it is that we are eating, where its coming from and who's profiting but it also understands that a lot of times, we don't have a choice what we eat. Often times its a financial boundary that separates families from paying bills and eating healthy. Yes, McDonald's is a cheap lunch, but it could also be a ticket to an early grave. So we're introduced the mother who lost her three year old child to E Coli after eating a bad burger. Yes, its a sad story and a shame that this kind of thing is happening as a result of doing something that should be harmless, but when overdone (often in Documentaries) sob stories aren't heartbreaking or influential but rather obnoxious and overbearing. Learning how and why we can get sick from eating beef is much more informative and effective. Everyone knows cigarettes can give you lung cancer and kill you, but I don't want to watch a documentary with testimonies from everyone who's lost loved ones to cigarettes. I'd rather see who's really responsible and why corporations don't seem to care if they are killing people. Is money really that powerful?

I may sound unsympathetic but the death of a three year isn't really what Food, Inc. is about. It is about what we eat and where it comes from. Much of the story surrounds farmers, crop farmers, cow farmers, chicken farmers. I had much more sympathy for them in this film than the mother of a dead child. Let me finish... their entire livelihood relies on selling that which they grow, whether its dairy, beef, corn, chicken or anything. If it was as simple as growing it and selling it, whether or not they made money would be their own problem. However, the way they are controlled by the very few but extremely big and powerful food distribution corporations is disturbing. I'm always hesitant to completely jump on board with the apparent victims when documentaries don't include all sides of the stories but I can't blame this one for that as they point out that every one of these corporations refused to be interviewed. Interpret that however you'd like, but that speaks pretty loudly on its own.

When reviewing a documentary, its not so much what the film is about as it is how its made. I compared it briefly to The Cove. In my review of the Cove I pointed out that it gave no choices about how to feel about the situation. Yes, its very likely that what is going on with those dolphins is terrible but I'd like to decide that on my own. Food, Inc. (for the most part) informs, thus allowing me to continue making my own decisions. It outlines the consequences of those decisions but it doesn't tell me that I'd better eat healthy or else! It does its best to explore every side of the story that it can. It shows us the differences between the way organic foods are processed compared to everything else. Sometimes its as simple as the way the animals are treated when alive and sometimes its what they're injected with so they grow faster. Either way, I was presented with accurate information that made me think about the choices I make as I eat. Am I going to stop eating meat? No. Am I going to buy Organic foods? When I can afford it, yes. But even when I don't, I understand the risks and what I'm supporting.