Food Inc.

We just watched Food Inc. in class. It was a very interesting movie, and disturbing at the same time… It was divided in 6 chapters with very powerful and shocking statement in each of them. I will talk about things that caught my attention in each chapter, then I am going to try and explain how much it changed my way of thinking and my point of view about this whole situation.



The first chapter of the movie, Fast Food to All, stated the idea of people in general want their food to be cheap, fast and easy. This idea is very important because it is used during the whole movie. I kind of already knew that though… It has a lot of consequences, for example where the food we eat come from. Few people are aware of this but animals that have for only destiny to end up in boxes in our supermarket receive terrible treatements. They are “things”, when they should be treated like livings. They don’t have any right, besides the one to do their job which is more of an obligation than a right… They don’t have a choice. Treating them bad affect their biological organism, which affects us since we eat them… In the movie they say that this person had an antibiotics intolerance due to food.
Corn-u-copia of Choices, the second chapter, was very interesting and a huge eye-opener. There is corn in EVERYTHING we eat. I had no idea about that… I eat corn in cans, or I frie it, but I leart that I am also eating corn everytime I am eating McDonalds, chips, ketchup, cheese, drinking coke.. It all comes from what the animals are fed with. Farmers give them corn because it’s cheap, and we end up eating have corn in 90% of our food as Larry Jonhson said. This other guy in the movie says “Corn is really cheap, and corn make them fat very quickly”. At the end, that is exactly what we want, isn’t it? Cheap, easy and fast?
I was very shocked by the 3rd chapter of the movie, Unintended Consequences. It is about how this little kid died in 12 days from eating hamburgers… The mother was moved and moving during the multiple interview she gave. She is been fighting the companie that fed her son the deadly hamburger for 7years. Like she said, all she wanted was an apology and for them to take the product out of the market. Food contamination will become an even bigger issue than it already is if we don’t do something. Something else caught my attention though. They say in the movie that if you take the cow out of her corn diet and feed her grass for 5days, she will shoot out 85% of E. coli (one of the food contaminations I guess) she got. Instead of doing it though industries come up with high tech fixees that will allow the system to survive… Just because it is faster and answers the people’s demands.
Chapter 4, The Dollar Menu, was rewarding, even if I did know most of the things that they said… People don’t want to bother raising money to eat healthy. They will prefer fast food. Putting all the blame on them would be too easy though… Vegetables have become very expensive, it is even ridiculous. You can try to eat healthy but if on the top of the prices beeing crazy you have some recurent disease like diabetes or cholesterol, you just can’t do it. Medicines are expensive too… Nowadays healthy food is affordable to people who has good jobs and a good level of life. It is crazy to say but so true at the same time! Eating healthy should be a right, not a priviledge… It is also a responsibility; the responsibility to make the right choices… Some smokers will prefer buying their two packs of cigarrettes a day instead of getti ng vegetables for their kids. This is when you stop, look around, and realize there is a problem.
The main thing that poped out of chapter 5, In The Grass, is the illegal immigrants working for the chicken slaughter houses. Of course I knew they were being exploited, we have the same issue in France with North African countries… I guess I am just taking a chance to tell my opinion. I think this is crap and YES I am saying it, that they are treated that way. Companies take so much advantage of them it is not even funny. They know that immigrants won’t say anything because if they do they will be in trouble with the service of immigration. So they don’t respect them as persons, they barely pay them – when they pay them. The thing is I don’t know that there is any solution to this problem… Because they are not supposed to be in the US, so in a way if they are not happy with their work they could just go back from where they come from but it sounds so terrible to say!! I guess I am just very shocked by the companies who are really acting like monsters. It would be up to them to be fair if they hire them. If they don’t want to be fair and give them a chance to raise money and build a life here, then just don’t do it. Don’t do it if it is to treat them as things, and not as persons… But once again this is just my opinion.
I am not going to lie, chapter 6, Hidden Costs, was my least favorite one. I guess one of the only point that caught my attention was the fact that small companies are usually taken over by big companies… There is nothing new about it. The small town business wouldn’t be anything when a Wallmart get built right next to it. Big supermarket have an easy access and we are use to them… On the other hand we feel bad for the owner of the little bakery, plus we don’t trust the big supermarkets and the big companies as much as we trust the shop of the town. It also ruins the social interactions.



So this is when I am supposed to give my opinion about all this and to say how it changed my thinking… Well I learned a lot of things, and I was shocked by most of it. I am just wondering how we can all be sitting on our couches, while all this is happenning. Nobody will say anything or protest because people are comfortable with it. They do not want to hear the truth! When they do they act concerned for a bit, then go right back to their McDonalds because this is just what they do. They don’t want to give up the comfort of getting a meal in 5minutes for cheap money, especially when vegetables and healthy food is so expensive! Because it is, let’s face it. I just think there is some point when we didn’t make the right choices. For example there is those lands all over the country: how about growing vegetables? Nobody would do it. But I am going to tell you what: this is not a lack of room, but a lack of motivation. We are lazy. We complain that food is expensive, but we don’t change our way of life. I am blaming people for that but I am lazy, and I love fast food too. But I do wish I knew how to speak up and fight what this food system has become. The way they treat animal makes me want to throw up. It does! I will definitely make some researches about how to change things from my powerless and helpless place.



It was a really good movie, and I only wish more people knew about all this… We need to spread it out, talking to people around us about it, who will talk about other persons, who will talk to other persons, etc. Because I don’t know about you guys but I am just grossed out and very pissed off about our society right now. This needs to stop.