The Most Important Movie of the Year

I just saw Food, Inc., which I believe is the most important movie of the year. Why? Because no other movie covers a basic need of all human beings in such a comprehensive and compelling way. This was the movie form of what I'd refer to as "the food bible" (with the old and new testaments of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan). Neither book alone gives you the full picture of the food system and its many problems, but together they do a darn good job giving someone who may have never considered where food comes from a basic idea of what's ACTUALLY going on.

The movie does not cover absolutely everything there is to know about the food system. If it did, it would probably be about 10 hours long. What it did do was hit the highlights of the most important, thought-provoking, and gut-wrenching details of our food system's problems, and it did it in about 90 minutes, which is probably about the maximum length of anyone's attention span anyway. In other words, making the film longer in the interest of being 100% comprehensive would have probably detracted from it.

In Food, Inc. you are introduced to a mother who lost her 2 1/2 year old son to a hamburger tainted with E. coli. He went from healthy to dead in 12 days and yet - to date - industry has succeeded in defeating the food safety bill his mother is pushing for. The bill - Kevin's Law - simply states that if a plant is caught repeatedly producing tainted meat, the USDA can shut it down. You are probably surprised to learn that this is not ALREADY the law. And yet, to date, Congress has not succeeded in passing it and children are still dying from burgers and other foods.

Another segment shows a family eating at Burger King. The father is diabetic and his medicine costs a few hundred a month. They can barely afford the meds and they fear he will go blind. Blindness would be catastrophic for him because he drives for a living and requires the use of his eyes for that. They do what they have to do cut costs and pay for his meds, and that means dining at Burger King. Obviously, eating Burger King is not a good way to manage one's diabetes. You can see them at the grocery store. They want to eat healthy. They want broccoli (too expensive). They want pears (too expensive). But processed crap? Ohh, that's affordable. It's hard to judge somebody harshly for eating fast food when their alternative is starvation.

Another part I particularly liked was when they visited the rural South - chicken country. Factory farm country, that is. One farmer they talk to rolls down the windows of his car, takes a sniff, and says "Smells like money!" My first thought was: They better expose what a lie that is! 25% of chicken growers LOSE money each year, and for the other 75% who actually make money, they don't make much. A $500,000 investment will get you profits of $18,000 per year - hardly enough to live. But who was I to doubt Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan? They actually DO share that statistic.

When this movie comes out, definitely go see it. And when you do, round up several family members and friends who aren't hip to the reality of our food system and tell them they have to go see a great movie with you. Offer to buy their tickets if that's what it takes. And if your friends DO go see the film and they are moved by it, give them a reading list! Pollan's and Schlosser's books each expand on the content of the film. Or, not to totally self-promote, but tell them to read my book. While their books focus primarily on the problems in our food system (although a significant section of Pollan's book provides a picture of truly sustainable agriculture), my book focuses on the solutions. And after seeing a film that hits you in the gut like this one, I think you NEED to focus on the solutions. Otherwise the reality is just too depressing.

Photo credit: Peter Blanchard on Flickr.com