Food, Inc. LOVE
Posted by Lindsay Muller on Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Love, Love, Love...
"The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years than in the previous 10,000. The modern supermarket has on average 47,000 products. The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating because if you knew you might not want to eat it. We've never had food companies this powerful in our history."
"Everything we've done in modern agriculture is to grow...
faster
"They have managed to make it against the law to criticize food products. There is an effort to make it illegal to publish a photo of any industrial food operations. And it's making us sick. Smells like money to me. But you have the power to turn the tables. The average consumer does not feel very powerful, but it's the exact opposite. Look at the tobacco industry... the battle against tobacco is a perfect model of how an industry's irresponsible behavior can be changed. Imagine what it'd be if as a national policy the idea to have such nutritionally dense food that people actually felt better, have more energy and weren't sick as much. That's a nobel goal! People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food of us and we'll deliver. I promise you." -Various farmers and food authors in Food, Inc.
Food, Inc. trailer (Please click here if the trailer below is not displayed correctly.)
Q&A with
Producer/Director, Robert Kenner
Co-Producer/Food Expert, Eric Schlosser
Food Expert, Michael Pollan
Producer, Elise Pearlstein
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Kenner: As we set out to find out how our food was made, I think the thing that really became most shocking is when we were talking to a woman, Barbara Kowalcyk, who had lost her son to eating a hamburger with E. coli, and she’s now dedicated her life to trying to make the food system safer. It’s the only way she can recover from the loss of her child. But when I asked her what she eats, she told me she couldn't tell me because she would be sued if she answered.
What have been the consequences for the American consumer?
Kenner: Most American consumers think that we are being protected. But that is not the case. Right now the USDA does not have the authority to shut down a plant that is producing contaminated meat. The FDA and the USDA have had their inspectors cut back. And it’s for these companies now to self-police, and what we’ve found is, when there’s a financial interest involved, these companies would rather make the money and be sued than correct it. Self-policing has really just been a miserable failure. And I think that's been really quite harmful to the American consumer and to the American worker.
Pearlstein: The food industry has succeeded in keeping some very important information about their products hidden from consumers. It’s outrageous that genetically modified foods don’t need to be labeled. Today more than 70% of processed foods in the supermarket are genetically modified and we have absolutely no way of knowing. Whatever your position, you should have the right to make informed choices, and we don’t. Now the FDA is contemplating whether or not to label meat and milk from cloned cows. It seems very basic that consumers should have the right to know if they’re eating a cloned steak.
How has fast food changed the food we buy at the supermarket?
Schlosser: The enormous buying power of the fast food industry helped to transform the entire food production system of the United States. So even when you purchase food at the supermarket, you’re likely to be getting products that came from factories, feedlots and suppliers that emerged to serve the fast food chains.
Is it possible to feed a nation of millions without this kind of industrialized processing?
Pollan: Yes. There are alternative ways of producing food that could improve Americans’ health. Quality matters as much as quantity and yield is not the measure of a healthy food system. Quantity improves a population’s health up to a point; after that, quality and diversity matters more. And it’s wrong to assume that the industrialized food system is feeding everyone well or keeping the population healthy. It’s failing on both counts.
Coming Soon... Understanding the Nutrition Facts Label: Calories
"Everything we've done in modern agriculture is to grow...
faster
fatter
bigger
cheaper."
bigger
cheaper."
"They have managed to make it against the law to criticize food products. There is an effort to make it illegal to publish a photo of any industrial food operations. And it's making us sick. Smells like money to me. But you have the power to turn the tables. The average consumer does not feel very powerful, but it's the exact opposite. Look at the tobacco industry... the battle against tobacco is a perfect model of how an industry's irresponsible behavior can be changed. Imagine what it'd be if as a national policy the idea to have such nutritionally dense food that people actually felt better, have more energy and weren't sick as much. That's a nobel goal! People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food of us and we'll deliver. I promise you." -Various farmers and food authors in Food, Inc.
Food, Inc. trailer (Please click here if the trailer below is not displayed correctly.)
Q&A with
Producer/Director, Robert Kenner
Co-Producer/Food Expert, Eric Schlosser
Food Expert, Michael Pollan
Producer, Elise Pearlstein
What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Kenner: As we set out to find out how our food was made, I think the thing that really became most shocking is when we were talking to a woman, Barbara Kowalcyk, who had lost her son to eating a hamburger with E. coli, and she’s now dedicated her life to trying to make the food system safer. It’s the only way she can recover from the loss of her child. But when I asked her what she eats, she told me she couldn't tell me because she would be sued if she answered.
What have been the consequences for the American consumer?
Kenner: Most American consumers think that we are being protected. But that is not the case. Right now the USDA does not have the authority to shut down a plant that is producing contaminated meat. The FDA and the USDA have had their inspectors cut back. And it’s for these companies now to self-police, and what we’ve found is, when there’s a financial interest involved, these companies would rather make the money and be sued than correct it. Self-policing has really just been a miserable failure. And I think that's been really quite harmful to the American consumer and to the American worker.
Pearlstein: The food industry has succeeded in keeping some very important information about their products hidden from consumers. It’s outrageous that genetically modified foods don’t need to be labeled. Today more than 70% of processed foods in the supermarket are genetically modified and we have absolutely no way of knowing. Whatever your position, you should have the right to make informed choices, and we don’t. Now the FDA is contemplating whether or not to label meat and milk from cloned cows. It seems very basic that consumers should have the right to know if they’re eating a cloned steak.
How has fast food changed the food we buy at the supermarket?
Schlosser: The enormous buying power of the fast food industry helped to transform the entire food production system of the United States. So even when you purchase food at the supermarket, you’re likely to be getting products that came from factories, feedlots and suppliers that emerged to serve the fast food chains.
Is it possible to feed a nation of millions without this kind of industrialized processing?
Pollan: Yes. There are alternative ways of producing food that could improve Americans’ health. Quality matters as much as quantity and yield is not the measure of a healthy food system. Quantity improves a population’s health up to a point; after that, quality and diversity matters more. And it’s wrong to assume that the industrialized food system is feeding everyone well or keeping the population healthy. It’s failing on both counts.
Coming Soon... Understanding the Nutrition Facts Label: Calories