Food, Inc. 2
What is my relationship with food? It is difficult pretty difficult. Because I have Type 1 diabetes,” says one of the interviewees in the documentary ‘Food, Inc. 2’ which is a sequel, rephrasing is not needed to the 2008 film ‘Food, Inc.’. The comment is made by Larissa Zimberoff, author of the investigative book Technically Food Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change the Way We Eat and featured in the film as well.
Usually, people eat normal and do not have food on their minds all the time. But as Zimberoff puts it, “I think most of us love food, but we don’t have to think about it every day, every hour.” I can’t say that she does not throw tantrums to her wife but let’s go to the morning, where I ask “What do you want to eat for dinner” in the morning.
Now to me, if garbage can be eaten, so be it. I know that what it is there, I would try it at least once. You people must remember Dwight Yoakam’s cursed phrase ‘chicken rings afire.’ You don’t remember? Let me remind you I tried these things once! They were strange.
The second part of this two-part documentary series directed by Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo contains more information about the horrible things that America’s corporate food is doing to make people sick. However, it starts out by explaining what appears to be encouragement, which is that due to the rising food consciousness, more number of healthier and palatable options are becoming available. I have witnessed these debates for some time and I recall watching the first talking head and saying “Wow, Michael Pollan aged.” It is a social set of relations, food, he says and explains how a more conscious understanding of this has created a trend to localize and even more farmer’s markets than ever. The good news is short lived however, for a long time. “We thought we could create food system consistent with our values.” But the forces against were big.
Eric Schlosser, in his book Fast Food Nation, observes that in America the food industry was dominated by competition and prosperity in the 1950s but withtime everything changed as monopolization took over. And how the pandemic exposed the hollowness of the US’s self satisfied attitude about its own achievement. Management from the hands of a few corporations was able to bring about an equilibrium to the system. The COVID pandemic turned the whole order upside down, and in its place there was disorder, and shortages where there should not have been any, ruled.
The film makers have not lost sight of connectivity, which is appropriate given Pollan’s comments from the very start. Abuse of immigrant labor in Florida creates a cascading effect at the end of a chain that’s being started by bioworkers making ‘ultra-processed foods.’ The impacts of climate change become less subtle, yes indeed. Soft drink makers go pale at the thought of “if you substitute calories for aspartame you are probably endangering a person.” For now, however, fast food restaurants (or as they seem to enjoy calling themselves, “Quick Service Venues”) are expanding there portions sizes back to the supreme level.
It’s quite a shock to see my dear Baconator chomping along in a sequence devoted to things which one shouldn’t indulge in, and there was also a time when I had to keep my Crunchy Jalapeno Cheetos aside because it was wrong in the context of the movie. Why was I even given this movie? Well. On the side of good is Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey who has taken an interest in agri foods knowing very well that the low income members are middle men who would be exploited easily to sell unhealthy foods by virtue of their need so they constantly indulge in such foods to seek quick gratification and a few companies whose greed has been outweighed by their ethics to a point where they still focus on quality over quantity and thus, compromise the corporate chain. For a while it seems that every time the movie offers a bright spot in the picture, there is a yes, but fallacy on some statement, as when Schlosser depicts a degree of unease about the plant based burger ‘There is, as many skeptics here, I would say’(not for the same reasons, Tera’d suggest). ‘I really believe that kelp is gonna be the most sustainable food on the planet one farmer for the sea gives the impression. ‘Dig in!’ I thought.
However, to look back at it, this is an interesting activist documentary that manages to leave the audience with a sense of optimism towards the end, however there is a rather blunt message about fostering change in the way we eat, “We don’t just have to do it. We can do it.”
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