Food, Inc.

If you like documentaries which also entertain, this could be the film for you. Food, Inc. is a documentary that will also leave the viewer somewhat alarmed about the food he is putting into his digestive system on a daily basis. Director Robert Kenner conducts a serious examination in this film of the entire food production and delivery network. He shows us how food arrives to us from the farm or the factory, and what processes it goes through before making it to our table. Even more importantly, he shows us how those various processes, and the advances in preservation techniques over the last 50 years have had a startlingly negative impact on both our environment as well as our level of physical health.

This is what you would call an advocacy film, but it is an alarming one too. And perhaps that is Kenner’s whole motivation for making it. He wants us to see how all the modern conveniences we enjoy – instant frozen dinners, fast food, convenience items readily available at your local supermarket – are so far inferior to the type of foods that may be a little more trouble to prepare, but so much easier on the environment and on one’s digestive track. He also traces how some processes used in modern food delivery systems have actually be found to cause certain diseases, some of which are fatal to humans.

Even our pets are not immune, as Kenner points out, and he seems to be making a rally call to get back to basics, and perhaps to an organic way of life.

This is a film designed to stir the viewer’s conscious, and it most definitely succeeds in that goal. Whether or not it will be a force for change in our comfortable ways remains to be seen.