Food, Inc.

[commiecat]

Food, Inc. came out a few months ago and started airing at our local state theatre, so we went out and watched it this past Friday.

It's a documentary about the industrialization of America's food supply and was actually quite well done. There was a dash of "the videos meat companies don't want you to see", most of which I've already seen, but it was much more informative documentary than shock documentary.

My wife read The Omnivore's Dilemma not too long ago so I was already aware of how corn became, and currently is, the dominant food in just about everything we eat. What surprised me most in the movie was the bit about soy production.

Monsanto is the leading manufacturer of Roundup, and they also genetically engineered a soy seed that would resist Roundup. Now some 90-something percent of all soy produced in America is both manufactured and patented by Monsanto. They speak in-depth about the pressure Monsanto puts on farmers to use the beans that are resistant to the herbicide that they also create. If a farmer cleans his seeds to regrow them next year, they violate the patent and Monsanto can, and will, sue them.

The movie points out how many past and current politicians, specifically tied to the FDA, were former consultants, lawyers, or employees of Tyson, Monsanto, and other mega corporations (shocker, I know). Advocacy groups are fighting these same companies over labeling laws. Do you think consumers should have a right to know if an ingredient (e.g. soy) is genetically modified by label identification, or is it detrimental and damaging to the corporate image?

If you've seen the movie, what did you think? If you haven't seen it then would you be interested in the content? Have your eating habits changed for the better in the past few years, and if so then why?

[MichaelP]

I haven't seen the movie yet, I actually didn't even hear about it.

I actually started growing a lot of my vegetables in the garden, without added fertilizers or pesticides, giving priority to heirloom varieties or stuff I can't find in shops. It is not that complicated, it doesn't take much time outside the initial setup and the final harvest... we're talking 10 minutes a week of actual garden work. The cost was really low as well, I only paid for the seeds.

This year's harvest included: cucumber (chinese long, japanese), carrot, salad (multiple varieties), cabbage (japanese and chinese), parsnip, onion, tomato, basil (regular, cherry-sized and beef heart), cilantro, squash, winter squash (kurikabocha, futsukabocha), beans (teepee and fava). The only seeds for which I didn't get to harvest anything were the zucchini... slugs ate them all but left my other cukes and squashes alone.

[chee16]

i can't wait to see this movie! it s sounds really good, we'll see i guess.

have you seen Food Matters? more based on diet for sure, but a very good movie.

[DwarvenChef]

Can't wait to see it as well, Seen the other movies and read the books, hear this is excellent

[v76]

Very interesting. I'll look into it. Also, if you haven't seen it already, The World According to Monsanto is also very revealing about their crass business model.

[commiecat]

Michael: That's awesome -- my European travels haven't taken me to Germany yet, so would you say that German culture/cuisine focuses more on regional foods, or imported industrial foods? We don't have a garden but we do have a local supermarket and a weekly farmer's market where we get most of our ingredients.

Chee: I've not seen Food Matters yet. Another book my wife read (she does the reading, I get the Cliff's Notes version) was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which is a non-fiction story about a woman who got her family to only eat locally-grown foods for a year.

Dwarven: It is an interesting film -- probably even more so when you're a chef.

v76: Food, Inc. was my first exposure to Monsanto and I'd love to see The World According to Monsanto. I can't get it on Netflix so maybe bittorrent will yield better results.

[jeff2011]

I haven't seen the movie, but I have read the Omnivore's Dilemna and a few other of Pollan's books--I absolutely love them, the philosphy, and the idealism. I grew up on a family farm as did my parents, and it has 'evolved' from the Polyface ideal as Pollan described which is how my parents grew up--huge gardens, livestock chickens, raw milk from the neighbor's dairy; to largely grain and livestock in my generation (I am 37), and now livestock is controlled by a select few, and grain is controlled by a select few with Monsanto leading the free world in genetics.

The economies of scale will be interesting--even with government subsidies in place, the price of a badgof seed corn may double or triple within the next 4 to 5 years as the parent crop genetics get more complex; which will yield more theoretically....but where will the market price be? Last year, it was $7/bushel (56 pounds of corn), this year it is $3. How will this economic model play out? Do enough consumers want the Polyface/Pollan/My Parents farm fresh food to pay more $$ for it, take land out of row crop production which drives corn and soybean prices up even more, and driving the rest of our food supply cost up up and up so the average or impoverished can't afford it? And also, thereby limiting the national and world supply of corn? Maybe we have too much corn, maybe not--but as a friend of mine who farms 3000 plus acres says, we can take it all out of production--and if enough of us do this, you tell us who will starve.

The other aspect of this is--

[commiecat]

I haven't seen the movie, but I have read the Omnivore's Dilemna and a few other of Pollan's books--I absolutely love them, the philosphy, and the idealism. I grew up on a family farm as did my parents, and it has 'evolved' from the Polyface ideal as Pollan described which is how my parents grew up--huge gardens, livestock chickens, raw milk from the neighbor's dairy; to largely grain and livestock in my generation (I am 37), and now livestock is controlled by a select few, and grain is controlled by a select few with Monsanto leading the free world in genetics.

The economies of scale will be interesting--even with government subsidies in place, the price of a badgof seed corn may double or triple within the next 4 to 5 years as the parent crop genetics get more complex; which will yield more theoretically....but where will the market price be? Last year, it was $7/bushel (56 pounds of corn), this year it is $3. How will this economic model play out? Do enough consumers want the Polyface/Pollan/My Parents farm fresh food to pay more $$ for it, take land out of row crop production which drives corn and soybean prices up even more, and driving the rest of our food supply cost up up and up so the average or impoverished can't afford it? And also, thereby limiting the national and world supply of corn? Maybe we have too much corn, maybe not--but as a friend of mine who farms 3000 plus acres says, we can take it all out of production--and if enough of us do this, you tell us who will starve.

The other aspect of this is--

There is a commune that's about a 45-minute drive from me and I've only been there once. They have a food gala every year in which they show off their homegrown foods in various dishes, so my wife and I went to check it out. We came back with a whole chicken and various cuts of beef, and it was absolutely delicious.

If we had a nearby farm similar to Polyface, I would support it in a heartbeat. We usually get our meats from a local grocer. If we get meat from Fresh Market or Publix (a large supermarket chain in the southeast) then we make sure it's grass fed. Typically, the more marbling (fat) in beef the better it will taste. The largest difference I've seen in grass fed is that there is much less marbling and I personally think it tastes better. It could also be that I'm a sucker for nature and it's reassuring to know that the animal I'm eating led somewhat of a natural life.

It's hard to imagine that the philosophy will ever become dominant in America. First, we probably have too many people and too little land for it to be feasible and second, they'll always be competing against $.99 hamburgers already prepared. Some people are like us and prefer paying a fair price for good food while others would rather spend $12 for a family meal at KFC than a single whole chicken.

Here's a nice segment from USA Today about Polyface:
YouTube - Polyface farm

[Philadelph]

Thanks for the heads up. I added it to my Netflix queue for when it comes out on dvd. I love documentaries like this. I saw an interesting one a while back, I believe it was called 'King Corn' about the role corn plays in our diets and why.

I've changed my eating habits in the past few years, yes. I now try not to buy ANY snack foods (processed type stuff like cookies, crackers, not baby carrots or snacks like that). It means that when I'm hungry, I need to prepare something to eat or eat something more natural. You'd be surprised at how much money this saves. I now put my saved money towards eating better- fresh vegetables, fish, meat, etc. I'd say it keeps me healthier too. It's hard to stay away from certain things around holiday times though or those seasonal items that are only available once a year!