Documentary Analysis: Food Incorporated

What is food? What does our food really contain? We can go days, weeks, and perhaps months and not noticing or taking a step back to wonder what our foods contain. Reality is we don’t always have the time to stop and notice these small things. In the short term these things don’t affect us, but in the long run what we consider small and insignificant can come to ruin our health issue. Many Americans do not know what is inside the food that they eat in their every day lives.

Food Inc. is a documentary directed by Robert Kenner and featuring the popular author, Eric Schlosser. It is aimed towards the general audience of consumers. Specifically those who do not tend to buy organic products, but buy the processed foods, fast foods, or foods from the top food companies. Kenner’s argument is how the big food companies are dangerous to both people and animals, financially and health-wise. He goes on to argue with, mostly, anecdotes of people affected (negatively) by these companies, as well as interviews with people involved with the companies.

The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous than in the previous 10 thousand. - Michael Pollan (Food Inc). The film entitled Food Inc is a documentary piece by Robert Kenner on the Food industry in America and the History which Lead the industry to where it is now and everyone who is affected by these changes. As a 22 year old college athlete it has never been at a more crucial time to keep track of my meals throughout the day. After a two hour training session the clock is ticking until my body has to go through this rigorous process all over again. Ensure that I am getting the proper nutrients in my body after completing a training session is crucial to making sure that I can elevate my game and get better

Food, Inc. the movie might well be considered a horror film. Actually it is not a horror film, but it contains information that I certainly considered horrible. Food, Inc.is a documentary made in 2008 and portrays our current “systems” of food production, which includes animal cruelty, worker cruelty and uncovers a behavior by the industry that feeds us that is an overall injustice to our society. This movie along with the movie Fed-Up and the many others address the issues at stake with regard to the way we eat. The movie Fed-Up was made in 2014, with newer data paralleling the food productions to irreversible obesity in our young children. Both of these movies serve to educate us in the hazard these methods are instilling on our earth and to ourselves as we produce and eat food

Food, Inc. is a strong critique of industrial food production, revealing truths about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here. Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how huge corporations have taken over all parts of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it 's sold. The film examines the industrial production of meat, grains, and vegetables, claiming the entirety of our food industry is cruel, and economically and environmentally unsustainable, as it continues to examine today’s industry by exploring the economic and legal powers large food companies have.

I was immediately intrigued from the beginning of Food, Inc. There was interesting and valuable information brought up during the film. Many people do not think about where their food comes from. I believe that if people were to know where their food comes from, they would not want to eat it. There are 47,000 products at a grocery store. But, Food, Inc. implies that this is in fact an illusion because all of them are made with the same crops. The fact that there are only a few multi-national corporations that control all of the crops and meat production is a huge surprise. I believe that each person in society would be absolutely shocked if they were to watch this documentary.

In the food industry today, junk food is fast, easy, and cheap to get, while healthy foods are more expensive and not nearly everyone has the ability to afford it. Americans are becoming obese and not enough people put enough effort into changing this for the future. It would be easy to just blame the fact that there is a McDonald’s around every corner, but it truly comes down to each individual buyer who doesn’t know how to make a stop in this. A lot of people cannot support their families with a healthy dinner so instead they feed them with the dollar menu that is much cheaper and faster. Robert Kenner created a film in 2008 called Food, Inc. about the faults and dilemmas within the the food industry. It covers many outlooks on the meat produce, like the chicken houses, the beef and pork companies, along with the independent family owned businesses. They investigate all types of methods, the problems they have caused within the past few decades, and attempt to find solutions in order to improve this way of the system and the impacts each buyer’s role is in this situation.

It has been taken over by large companies and marketed at high price. Our food is grown based on demand, not on health. In the film, Food, Inc., the chickens and cows are raised to be slaughtered as quick as possible. They are beefed up with feed that is full of antibiotics that become harmful for digestion. The chicken that are raised are in small areas where they have never been exposed to sunlight. There are plenty that die each day because of the conditions they are being kept in. The chicken’s organs cannot keep up with their growth, therefore, they cannot take two steps. Cows are basically in the same situation as the chickens. They are being fed corn instead of grass and are confined to small areas. Listening to the documentary about how the chances of cows being cleaned before slaughtered is traumatizing. That is the food that we eat and how we are supposed to have our intake of energy. If this is how the industry is treating the population we have today, I do not see much difference for the population

a. Symbol/pg. 38: something to which people attach meaning and then use to communicate with one another. The symbolic culture that exists within the supermarkets across America are far from actual representations of the true farm life and food processing market, that we the consumers fail to recognize. On thousands of processed food items across the storefront, images of farmers, picket fences, chicken coops, and other typical farm symbols are placed in the consumer’s sight so that they are forced to believe the farm friendly origins of their food. Almost every dairy product sold advertises cows in a green and open pasture, representing that the cows are happily and healthily living prior to begin used as a food source for mankind. This is

‘Food Inc’, is an informative, albeit slightly biased, documentary that attempts to expose the commercialisation and monopolisation of the greater food industry. The film attempts to show the unintended consequences resulting from this, and for the most part this technique is very effective; however there is an overreliance on pathos in lieu of facts and statistics at times.

The human body is a complex machine and it requires fuel to run. This “fuel” is known as food and for the body to be efficient, it needs to ingest the good fuel. At a glance, I thought that Food, Inc., would not make such an impact on me since it is an American documentary film. But, since our world is getting smaller, our resources are being transported and exchanged around the globe. So the food consumed in another continent can be found on the dinner tables of a different country.

Food Inc is a documentary directed and written by Robert Kenner along with co-writers Elise Pearlstein and Kim Roberts in 2008 to discuss the current origin of food production in the United States. This film takes viewers inside the slaughter houses, farms and factories that produce American food to show how food in the 21st century is no longer organically grown and raised for healthy eating. Instead it is now controlled, mutilated, and produced in large quantities by multi-million dollar companies in order to meet the demands of the fast food industry for profit. Food Inc provides an inside glance of how the owners and workers of these production locations have demands placed on them by these large companies to meet certain standards in order to keep their jobs or contract. Kenner goes on to show how safety and health risk are at the bottom of the priority list while producing more product at cheaper faster rates seems to be at the forefront for these corporations.

Robert Kenner, the director of “Food, Inc,” questions to the audience that how much do we really care about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and served by our families? Everyone knows what foods are; that any nourishing substance that is eaten or taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, and promote growth, and these are one of the most important thing for human beings. However, many people maybe never thought about bigger-breasted chickens, tomatoes which won’t go bad after many miles trip, and how pigs are killed in a really tiny and dark room by “The killer floor.”

Everyday, people consume processed food. From a quick meal at a fast food restaurant to a school lunch, most everyone in society is apart of the industrial food chain. The industrial food chain is a very controversial topic, including the treatment of animals and the overall nutrition of the food produced in the industry. In response to this controversy, social media began to cover what really went on in these industrial farms. Fresh is a documentary that was made to introduce the audience member to the controversial topic of the food industry and its counterpart, the organic farms of America.

Watching Food Inc. movie was a deception and a horrifying experience on what is happening in the food industry in the U.S. After spending time on some of resources like The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on food safety, The National Food Processors’ Association that are in place to protect farmer’s industry and food consumers, to find out these agencies like are not protecting farmers nor are protecting food consumers in the U.S; and to learn about big corporations like Tyson Foods, Monsanto that are controlling food industry are putting profit ahead of consumer health, the lives of American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. The examples failures of U.S. laws including granting patent right of seed to Monsanto,