Food Inc.: Fairly Snazzy (But Somewhat Empty) Propaganda

The Mrs. and I went to see Food Inc. this evening, knowing almost exactly what we were getting ourselves into. And there really wasn’t anything surprising in that hour and a half, except perhaps that it felt like a much longer movie. Having read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I probably could have written this movie myself…or at least the parts with Pollan in them.

Here’s the break-down: we eat a lot of things that are bad for us because the food industry has a lot of money with which they purchase political influence. If you are shocked, you clearly must be living under a rock somewhere and only emerging to pick your own organic lettuce. Hamburgers are cheap and terrible; local, organic, pesticide-free carrots are expensive and wonderful. Poor people are being poisoned and can’t do much about it (we see this poignantly in the film) and rich people are too stupid or lazy to care (we are to infer from the somewhat snazzy, mobile snippets of text shown as act breaks). If only the rich people, like those who put down their $8.50 for a ticket to see this movie, would go to the local farmers’ market and buy an oddly-shaped zucchini for the price of a complete fast food meal, perhaps we could see change occur for the downtrodden poor who have choice but to make matters worse for their diabetes by consuming three $1 cheeseburgers in a single meal.

Or something generally along those lines.

The truth is that, despite my posturing, I’m sort of sympathetic to this argument. The handful of giant corporations that control the food in this country are acting in the interests of their shareholders rather than the public at large. And our elected representatives (and unelected judges) are making terrible decisions, on our behalf but at the behest of these corporations, that result in massive corn subsidies and terrible regulation of the meat industry and so on. Beef should be a good deal more expensive than it is now and Monsanto shouldn’t have a patent on soybeans. And, of course, I can say this at least in part because I don’t eat beef and because I read labels pretty carefully when I go grocery shopping. This is relatively easy for me because it wouldn’t be a big deal if I had to pay a bit more for groceries than I do now…and I generally pay a lot because we buy a lot of fresh produce and we stay away from things that are chock full of sugars.

But I really wonder whether the kind of change that this movie is encouraging is ever going to happen or if we’re already too late. We’re told, simply, that we can make a change by buying products that are better for us, that supermarkets will notice the change and react, which will then force the big corporations to make changes. Or we can put pressure on legislators and create change that way. And that would be terrific, if it was something that most people actually could do. But for the family in the film, the folks who ate their Dollar Menu cheeseburgers in their car, there isn’t really a choice: they can buy three nice-looking pieces of fruit or they can have an entire meal for a family of five. And there seem to be a whole lot of people who are faced with that lack-of-a-choice every day. Most people aren’t like me, picking and choosing which farmers’ market to check out on the weekend, buying fresh fruit twice a week, and choosing to abstain from beef, pork, and lamb. Most people are just trying to get calories, to fill up without breaking the bank. So they can’t really choose the organic yogurt - even though it’s now available at Wal*Mart - because it’s a lot more expensive than the giant corporation’s brand(s).

I know what’s good for me and I know what’s bad for me…and I’m not convinced that my knowing these things will really make much of a difference for anyone in the long run. I can afford to be healthy, but my choices don’t seem to be changing the world. I haven’t been to a fast food burger joint in about six years, but they don’t seem to be missing me. The real question, the one this film (and this argument in general) doesn’t address, is how to finance better choices for the people whose business McDonald’s and Burger King would miss.

Any thoughts on that one?