Food, Inc.: the short review

*insert picture of iced gingerbread Clif bar and three cups of coffee here for Friday morning breakfast*

Morning!  I finally saw the rest of Food, Inc. Wednesday night before the Top Chef finale (BOO to the winner!).  While the movie was still mostly fresh in my mind, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts/impressions on it.  Warning: this will likely come off very preachy/soapbox-y, so apologies in advance!

My biggest takeaway from Food, Inc. (and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and In Defense of Food, and The End of Overeating) is a tremendous feeling of betrayal.  Restaurants, fast food places and processed food corporations are all guilty of playing into our most basic evolutionary cravings for fat, salt and sugar to get us to eat more food.  If you look at food labels really closely, you’ll find that fat, salt and sugar are added to foods that normally shouldn’t have them; it reminds me of a scene from “Super Size Me” where Morgan Spurlock displays the only items on the McDonald’s menu that don’t have high-fructose corn syrup in them: diet coke and salad (I think that’s right –I’m pretty sure the salad dressing has HFCS in it, though).  Why is there added sugar in chicken nuggets?  In cheeseburgers? 

It makes no sense to the people who eat these foods, but it sure makes sense to the people producing the food: the more people eat food filled with added fat, salt and sugar, the more their brains will crave these foods, leading to bigger waistlines (us) and bigger profits (them). 

Want to know another scary thing?  According to research quoted in In Defense of Food, many Americans are not in tune with our hunger and satiety signals.  Instead, we tend to look to external prompts to let us know when we should stop eating, such as reaching the bottom of a bowl of ice cream or finishing a bag of chips.  I’m sure you’ve read the countless news stories over the years about our plates getting bigger over time and portions increasing – our current “small” fast food beverage was considered “large” 40-50 years ago – and it’s pretty easy to make the connection between our bigger plates, bigger appetites and resulting bigger bellies.  In contrast, people from other countries in the same survey report actually listening to their bodies (what a crazy thought!) and push their plates away when they are full, not when the plate is clean.

I’m not going to attempt to explain these food production issues in greater detail – I’m no food scientist, doctor or researcher – so I’d strongly suggest either one of Michael Pollan’s books (In Defense of Food or The Omnivore’s Dilemma) or David Kessler’s book, The End of Overeating, for more information.  Here’s a brief article on Dr. Kessler and his research on cravings and biology: Crave Man: David Kessler Knew That Some Foods Are Hard to Resist; Now He Knows Why.

Anyway, back to Food, Inc.  I had an incredibly hard time watching the scenes where they showed animals in factory farming conditions – chickens basically spending their lives cramped in a windowless shed, knee-deep in their own waste, before they get tossed in a truck and sent to the slaughterhouse.  It turns my stomach just typing this   It was also terrible to hear about how poorly the (mostly illegal immigrant) workers are treated who work at the slaughterhouses; they get paid nothing, work ridiculous hours in DISGUSTING conditions, and many of them wind up being sold out to the authorities by their employers and deported.

There’s plenty more covered in the movie – including the totally awesome Polyface Farms, which I wish was around the corner from me, and interesting insights from the CEO of Stonyfield Farms  – but I won’t go into it all here.  I highly suggest renting this movie if you’re interested in where your food comes from and how you can use your power ($$) to change the current system.

I came to a decision after watching Food, Inc. that’s been in the works for a LONG time: starting January 1, I’m going vegetarian.  Let me clarify a bit; I’m not going 100% veggie, but I’m not going to eat meat if I don’t know exactly where it came from and the life it led before it was killed. 

I’m also going to go out of my way to find eggs and milk from pastured animals, not free range; the “free range” designation can be a little cagey (no pun intended!) and just means the animal had access to the outdoors at some point in their life, not necessarily that they were raised in the open air.

Matt and I also decided that we’re going to go as locavore as possible in the future, buying our weekly staples from the farmer’s market, not the big box supermarket.  We’re voting with our wallets and making fresh, local, humanely raised food our priority. 

Alright, time for me to climb off my soapbox.  Have a great day!

Did you see Food, Inc.?  If so, did it change your eating/food buying habits at all?