My take on the documentary "Food, Inc."
Food, Inc. proved that without a doubt the US food industry is scarily broken.
We are one of the most unhealthy countries in the world, ingesting more sugar and fat than the human body would ever need. Fast food defines our nation, and the simple act of gathering around the table for dinner has become a luxury many families don't afford themselves. Unfortunately, the economics of food in the US is set up to support this. The cheapest food is the most unhealthy, and families on a shoe-string budget have little choice in the matter of what they eat. In the fight against bulging waistlines, we are staking the deck against ourselves.
Michael Pollan, the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma and champion for healthy and reasonable food choices, has been on the case for years. From an article written in 2007 for the New York Times titled "You Are What You Grow", he explains how the current system is setup to fail.
"This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots? For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.
That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow."
Michael Pollan, the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma and champion for healthy and reasonable food choices, has been on the case for years. From an article written in 2007 for the New York Times titled "You Are What You Grow", he explains how the current system is setup to fail.
"This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots? For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.
That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow."
It's pretty scary to think that our government's legislation is what is leading our country down a spiral of obesity. Unfortunately it's true. Farmers are incentivized to produce corn, and chemists continue to produce new ways to cram it into foods you wouldn't necessarily associate with corn. For example, high fructose corn syrup in an ingredient in Oreo Cookies, Coca-Cola, Thomas English Muffins, Heinz Ketchup, Yoplait Yogurts and Campbell's Soup. If you ever need more convincing on the subject of how corn has made it's way into many of our foods, look no further than the documentary King Corn.
Food, Inc. movie is jarring at times, but it must to get it's point across. It lifts the veil off the food industry and gives you a unique perspective that we don't have when pulling up to the drive-in or sitting down for a juicy burger at TGI Fridays. Overall it teaches us that we must be more prudent with our food choices.
I honestly believe it's 90 minutes that will fundamentally change the way you select food in the supermarket. Or perhaps get you to join a local grower's association or seek out farmer's markets. I couldn't be happier to have watched it. At the very least, it will prove to you that things like grass-fed beef, free-range chicken and locally grown (and in-season) vegetables are well worth the extra expense.
Two thumbs...way up...
