Food Inc.!

Lame documentaries are pointless. 

Documentaries must shock to get viewers' attention. There are fool-proof ways to scare viewers and one is to present graphic images, alarming statistics and yes, the truth. Plain truth. Present these things in the most creative way you can then, you're on your way to a box-office killing and why not? An Oscar nomination.

"Food Inc." is a good example...

It presents a real, modern world of consumers and suppliers (this case, food suppliers). Consumers being us and suppliers being pseudo-farmers. Pseudo-farmers? These pseudo-farmers are actually a handful of big food corporations that dictate on real farmers what to grow, and how to grow them. As simple as that.  

  

It's the how-to-grow part that's really the scary part. 

"We are paid to overproduce"

"Food Inc." tells of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms); of beef with E. Coli; of the addictive corn syrup present in almost all of our food (processed or not) like Coke, sweeteners, orange juice, tomato catsup, hamburgers, salad dressing (and even batteries??), among others; of chickens that "live in perpetual darkness to make them sleep more and quarrel less and that they're fattened so fast they can't stand up or walk;" of cows that live standing on their manure... and list goes on.  

 

Do we care? Of course, we do. But not enough to do something about it. We may care enough to complain that our french fries is soggy or our Coke is not fizzy enough to the counter girl with a smiling, hazy look but have we actually gone out of our way to check where the beef of the square burgers of the red-haired girl in ponytail and the chicken of the nuggets of the Gay Clown in Kabuki come from? 

How did we honestly feel when we found out that a typical family (each member is a walking heart attack) in the States (and probably a thousand more family with a minimum-wage earning father) eats fast food with gusto for breakfast, lunch and dinner because it's cheaper than buying from the supermarket and cooking at home?


Here in the Philippines, I still have to hear about a group of 'concerned consumers' who bitches on national TV about the suspicious source of raw food of these fast food restaurants use. 

What I've been watching are very resourceful people in constant search of fast food left-overs (which they magically transform into new culinary creations!)in black garbage bags left by the store's staff after closing for the day. But that is an entirely different subject for another (more shocking?) documentary. 

Typical American family who finds it cheaper to eat fast food.

Let's move on. "Food Inc." served it's purpose of shocking the viewers and delivering it's message. Okay... what's next? 

Now that we've seen thousands of blind chickens whose legs are too weak to carry their artificially fat bodies, can now we stop buying and eating chicken nuggets? Now that we know that cows are forcefully fed corn instead of grass (which is their natural food), can we now vow not to order a Quarter Pounder again?

Really?