Food, Inc.

City Paper Grade: B

by Cindy Fuchs

CHOW DOWN: Genetically engineered food grown in unnatural environments constitutes most of Americans' diets.

[ city paper GRADE: B ]

There are no seasons in the American supermarket. You can get tomatoes all year round." So begins Robert Kenner's documentary on the U.S. food industry, which had its Philadelphia première at the 2009 Philadelphia Film Festival/Cinefest. Genetically engineered and grown in unnatural environments, these tomatoes — like other produce, as well as pigs and beef cattle — constitute the unhealthy diets of most citizens. It's not a conspiracy, exactly, but the result of repeated and ongoing decisions made in the face of adverse information, decisions based on bottom lines. As it combines and colorfully composes the reporting in a couple of famous sources — books like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, which evolved from a two-part Rolling Stone article, and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma — the movie presents an array of complaints, and also calls viewers to action. Organic farmer Joel Salatin spells out the crisis in philosophical terms: "A culture that just views a pig as a pile of protoplasmic inanimate structure to be manipulated by whatever creative design the human being can foist on that critter will probably view individuals within its community and other cultures in the community of nations with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling type mentality."

Read Felicia D'Ambrosio's interview with director Robert Kenner.