Food Inc. [PG]

Did you ever wonder where your food comes from? We all know the milk-comes-from-cow and egg-comes-from-chicken saga, but what journey does the produce go on as it makes its way from the farm to the grocery store isle? Despite the bright and friendly packaging, the history of your food may be just as plagued by as much betrayal, violence, and nightmarish scenarios as any Great War or horror movie that scarred you during childhood. Robert Kenner’s Food Inc. takes a look at the other side of food: the sinister side where brands and logos prove to dominate not only isle-space in the supermarket, but our eating habits, our local choice, and indeed our very lives. 

I’m generally not one for docos, in particular horrific food docos that are created, yes for the benefit of society, but also in order to turn you away from various brands, food lifestyle choices etc… I had a co-worker who, after watching not this but another food doco, went vegetarian because the imagery of the way meat is handled and treated before it becomes an addition to a butcher’s window made her sick right down to the bottom of her stomach and pretty much scarred her. I don’t like that. I don’t like the way that these docos set out to play these cards of frightening people to change their eating habits or melt their hearts with melancholy music and poor cute cows and pigs looking imploring at the camera. Believe me, I believe that the animals that are bred to be eaten should be treated humanely and with great respect, killed without pain and faster rather than slower, but something annoys me when doco makers play these cards to try and get the strongest response from the audience. Regardless, Food Inc. is a very well made doco that gets its horrifying message across without really resorting to overly dramatic, melancholy music, and horrific imagery of brutal slaughter. 

Did you ever wonder where your food comes from? We all know the milk-comes-from-cow and egg-comes-from-chicken saga, but what journey does the produce go on as it makes its way from the farm to the grocery store isle? Despite the bright and friendly packaging the history of your food may be just as plagued by as much betrayal, violence, and nightmarish scenarios as any Great War or horror movie that scarred you during childhood. Robert Kenner’s Food Inc. takes a look at the other side of food: the sinister side where brands and logos prove to dominate not only isle-space in the supermarket, but our eating habits, our local choice, and indeed our very lives. 

I think what I rather liked about this doco was that it looked at the topic from every possible angle. We not only see images and learn about the treatment of animals and the horrible side effects of the hormones that are pumped into them, but we learn of the horrible slave-labour work environments: people who work in these places are treated just as badly as the animals, many of them immigrants, foreigners tra la la. There’s a huge chapter of this film devoted to the human rights of the workers and how they are brutally rebuffed and shunned. We’ve then got the fact that quite a few of the farmers approached for interviews declined on the basis that there would be serious repercussions if they spoke out against the major conglomerates that pretty much rule them. The entire workforce in this industry is like a medieval society, ruled by one big name and the locals kept in line by fear. 

Look, if you’re interested in learning where your food really comes from and all the truth behind the opaque curtain of logos, I really would recommend this, it’s an engaging and rather an emotional rendering doco filled with truth, horror, drama, repression, and sadness. I only watched it because I had to for uni, normally I’m not into docos, food ones in particular, but I can honestly say that this one isn’t all that bad.