FOOD, INC. Time to make thoughtful food choices?

Roger Williams

A new film & book just released is raising the heat, & asking somewhat uncomfortable questions about the food we eat. When Megan Bedard wrote to me asking if I would be interested in promoting healthier food consciousness, I had no doubt in my mind. The foodie is me strives to offer healthy eating options to the family. On a daily basis, it’s about bringing healthy & affordable meals to the table … at times a struggle.The book, Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It, attempts to unravel the obstacles faced by families trying to eat healthy at an affordable price. Though the book & film are centred around huge food corporates in the US, the malaise is already creeping into our system here in India too. Globalisation brings with it highs & lows, we are certainly looking both in the face!

Food, Inc. is guaranteed to shake up our perceptions of what we eat. This powerful documentary deconstructing the corporate food industry in America was hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “more than a terrific movie—it’s an important movie.” Aided by expert commentators such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, the film poses questions such as: Where has my food come from, and who has processed it? What are the giant agribusinesses and what stake do they have in maintaining the status quo of food production and consumption? How can I feed my family healthy foods affordably? Expanding on the film’s themes, the book Food, Inc. will answer those questions through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers. This book will encourage those inspired by the film to learn more about the issues, and act to change the world. The book , written by food experts, is a companion to the new documentary, Food, Inc., which deconstructs the food industry in America. Participant Media is running a campaign to bring awareness to the issues in the movie, from cloning our food supply to E.Coli to the obstacles for families to eat healthy at an affordable price.

The book is also available for purchase here. “Food, Inc”, the movie, is a documentary that was created to look deeper into how the FDA and USDA control the food we eat, and the choices we have in our food supply. The film is already gaining national attention in the U.S. for its bold venture into the depths of the enormous corporations that are controlling the food supply.

You can learn more about the movie itself here. Good Morning America discussed it here, and the New York Times wrote about it here. “Into this world comes “Food, Inc.,” a documentary on the state of the nation’s food system that opens in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on Friday. “Food, Inc.” is part of a new generation of food films that drip with politics, not sauces. It’s eat-your-peas cinema that could make viewers not want to eat anything at all.”

To end, an interesting excerpt from Gina Telaroli who reports on Take Part … To whet your appetite ABC has put up an excerpt from the book, specifically an interview with Eric Schlosser. The below section really highlights why the film is necessary (and illustrates how the food problem goes beyond just what we eat):
“One of the more remarkable moments of my research occurred while I was visiting a home in the Midwest where a group of impoverished meatpacking workers lived. They were all illegal immigrants. And while I was talking with them, I learned that some of them had worked at a strawberry farm I’d visited for the Atlantic Monthly piece. That’s when I realized that this was a really important story, one that deserved a lot more of my time and attention. California has been exploiting migrant workers from Mexico for a hundred years. But that form of exploitation had, until recently, been limited to California and a handful of Southwestern states. Now it seemed to be spreading throughout the United States. Finding that illegal immigrants were being exploited in the heartland of America, in a little town that on the surface looked straight out of a Normal Rockwell postcard–well, to me, this was something new, a disturbing and important new trend.”