How much do we realy know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families? For most Americans, the ideal meal is fast, cheap, and tasty. Food, Inc. examines the costs of putting value and convenience over nutrition and environmental impact.
The filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on the American food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of the government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. The American food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and the environment. The Americans have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but they also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. They are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising, and often shocking truths.