HW 10 - Food, Inc. Response

1. Please summarize the main ideas of the film in a single paragraph succinct precis.

Fast food was created on the premise that it be like an assembly line: each person does one thing over and over again. Because they are only doing one thing, you can pay them less. Now, all our food is being produced this way. Not to mention, it's being processed - corn and soy can be made into dozens of different chemicals and sugars that are added to almost any packaged food in existence. There are only a few companies that produce most of the meat in America, and because it is made on such a large scale, there is a lot of room for error - the meat is made the same way in each place, so if something is wrong in one place, there's probably something wrong with the whole system.


2. What does the movie offer that the book didn't? What does the book offer that the movie didn't? 

The movie (Food, Inc.), being a movie, offers a visual representation of everything that is discussed: you can see the animals being killed, you can see the inside of the factories that make processed foods, you can see the assembly line. The book offers details, and insight into a more broad array of topics then the ones discussed in the movie - for example, in The Omnivore's Dilemma, Micheal Pollan discusses the ethics of eating animals, an issue that was not mentioned in the movie.

Another part where the book diverges from the movie would be when industrial organic food is discussed. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, there was a whole chapter about this, and it discussed the history of industrial organic food, and how it differed from organic and conventionally grown food. Micheal Pollan concluded that while industrial organic food was overall better then conventionally grown food (because there were no fossil fuels or harmful pesticides used to grow it), a large amount of oil was still used to ship it across the world.

However, when industrial organic food was mentioned in Food, Inc. it was portrayed more positively: they told the story of how the idea started out on a farm, and now companies such as Stonyfield Farms (a company that makes organic yogurt) sell their products at Walmart. What wasn't mentioned was how much fossil fuel was used to make these products (Stonyfield's yogurt is made in a factory), and used to ship them across the country. Some companies even get their ingredients shipped to them from across the world. This was probably because it was a movie, and there isn't really time to discuss every detail about the food; however, you would think that they would at least be consistent about what types of food they are recommending people eat (both the book and the movie agree that organic, locally grown food is best, but they differ in their opinion about industrial organic food).


3. What insights or questions or thoughts remain with you after watching this movie? What feelings dominate your response? What thoughts?

Even after watching the movie, and seeing how all the food I eat is grown and prepared, I still don't acknowledge this when I'm actually eating. The two things don't seem linked in my mind - the food being processed into a billion pieces in factories doesn't seem to have any relation to the food I eat everyday, perhaps because it isn't actually the exact same food I eat everyday, or perhaps, as they said, it's because food companies have made people think that way: that the chicken I'm eating for dinner has no relation to a real, live chicken.