Food Inc.

It's unprecedented. For me, at least. As a movie buff, I have seen literally thousands of movies and have even made a couple short films of my own. I hadn't heard of Food, Inc. until the Academy Awards and watched it earlier in the week.

This morning I was at the supermarket looking at beef patties. An employee to the left of me asked if I needed any help and without thinking about it, I asked him which ones were organic. He pointed out a few packages which read "100% organic. No growth hormones". When I was checking out, upon realizing that I was spending $8.99 on 6 beef patties, it clicked that in the last week I have been far more mindful of the food I'm devouring. Fast food, a staple of businesspeople who travel extensively, hadn't been in my diet in a week.

It's a change in lifestyle that I attribute to Food, Inc. In the many years I've been watching movies, never has one influenced me to change myself like this film. Food, Inc. is an eye-opening exposé of the food we eat and the corporations who dictate how it's made.

Early in the film we learn "when McDonalds is the largest purchaser of ground beef in the United States and they want their hamburgers to taste, everywhere, exactly the same, they change how ground beef is produced." It goes on to show how, like any other mass manufacturing industry, beef is made in huge quantities with one thing in mind: efficiency.

The filmmakers interview farmers and ranchers who are affected in some way by the giant food corporations - under the current system, nobody is excluded. If you're feeding the corporations, you have changed everything you do to meet their requirements. If you're attempting to make it on your own, you face the threat of being sued or run out of business by the system. Even the mother of a boy who died from E. Coli poisoning refused to discuss the changes to her own diet under fear that the meat and poultry industries would sue her for every dollar she has ever made and has yet to make.

While the film does a great job at showing some of what happens behind the scenes of the manufacturing of your favorite foods, it's clear that it only paints a corner of the big picture. The food companies are doing much more to get their products from Point A to Point C, but much of Point B is under lock and key.

If you're like me, the average American Joe Consumer, you've never looked at much more than the the nutritional label on your foods. You've never wondered how a small handful of corporations are able to feed a huge percentage of the 300 million Americans who spend their money on food. You never thought about the political powers that constitute the Food and Drug Administration. Food, Inc. leaves you with unanswered questions that give you, Joe Consumer, enough doubt in the health and environmental penalties to improve your own dietary lifestyle.

I have never been a vegan or anti-capitalist. Our country was built on capitalism and if it helps me to save money when I buy a car or furniture, I'm completely for it. But when it cases me to doubt my own well-being, I'm tempted to... well.. at least write a blog about it.