This movie should carry a cautionary label: "Warning: This movie may change the way you eat." "Food, Inc." is a convincing, well-produced, well-organized examination of the industrialization of our food supply, from what were many thousands of farmers fifty years ago into a well-connected and powerful machine now made up of a handful of giant players. One example: Did you know that there are now only 13 beef slaughterhouses in the U.S., down from 25,000 in the '50's, when such work was a ticket to the middle class, like auto factory jobs?
Today these jobs have been reduced to single-operation functions, like the fast food operations pioneered by the McDonald brothers, and often populated by imiigrant and illegal workers actively recruited by the corporations, workers who have no incentive to stand up for their rights or complain about conditions . Corn feed lots have replaced natural grass grazing, with resultant increases in infections, because corn, heavily subsidized by the government, while cheap, is not easily digested by cows which evolved eating grass. And the huge slaughter operations, processing many thousands of animals per day, become agents not just of economy, but of distribution of E-coli.
Why is it cheaper to buy a dollar meal at a fast food operation than to buy vegetables at the market? Why will one in three Americans born after 2000 develop diabetes? Why is 47,000 choices in the average supermarket an illusion? Is there anything we can do to reverse this unhealthy situation? These are all questions examined and answered in this documentary, which features zippy graphics and an unusually good sound track. See it and learn.
Rated PG. 94 minutes. Robert Kenner - Director / Producer, Elise Pearlstein - Producer, Richard Pearce - Cinematographer, Mark Adler - Composer, Kim Roberts - Editor. Produced by Participant Media and River Road Entertainment. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.
Principal subjects: Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosserhberg, Gary Hirschberg, and Joe Salatin.
Every year, in a migration still incompletely understood, millions upon millions of sardines form themselves into shoals of bait for all the sea's predators off the Wild Coast of South Africa. There are millions of Cape Gannets diving from the skys, pods of 3000 dolphins, many species of shark, African Penguins, Cape Fur Seals, and Humpback Whales drawn to the feast. It's a spectacular show captured for the IMAX screen in this wildly-entertaining, beautiful documentary with a terrific score. Recently named the Earthwatch Movie of the Year for 2009, it's a celebration of nature and a rebuke to what we have done to deplete the oceans elsewhere. Take the whole family. 
