Have you seen the movie Food Inc? Great article review of this movie!

You are what you eat: 'Food, Inc.'
Posted by Shawn Levy, The Oregonian June 19, 2009 04:39AM

Showing a film such as "Food, Inc." to an audience that has already purchased its buttered popcorn, jugs of soda and boxes of Mike and Ikes and Sno Caps seems slightly evil. I'm reminded of Edmund O'Brien in the first scene of "D.O.A." telling the police that he has been murdered: The damage has been done before the opening credits have rolled.

"Food, Inc." is an expose of the food we grow and eat, revealing the policies that shape agricultural trends; the provenance of the seeds from which our corn and wheat and soy are grown; the processes by which beef, poultry and pork products are raised and brought to market; the state of food safety inspection and regulation; the labor conditions in the agriculture and food preparation businesses; the marketing and packaging that guide our food choices; the impact of diet on individuals and whole populations; and more.

We've had a spate of movies with similar themes in recent years, all telling us that we eat poorly and that we're being hoodwinked by corporations that are in cahoots with political powers, including the documentaries "Super Size Me," "King Corn," "The Future of Food" and "Our Daily Bread," and the feature film "Fast Food Nation."

That last one was an adaptation of journalist Eric Schlosser's book of the same name, one of the first widely digested attacks on the American way of eating. Schlosser is a producer of "Food, Inc." and appears as one of its principal talking heads, as does Michael Pollan, the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food," two other key texts in the burgeoning movement to remake the food system into something more rational and healthy.

Director Robert Kenner allows these two ample room for their ideas about the dangers, health risks, political machinations and just plain illogical practices of modern food production.

These are illustrated with visits to chicken farmers (some in the corporate industrial system, some working all naturally on their own), to an organic yogurt magnate, to the fields and homes of farmers who want to collect the seeds from their crops rather than buy genetically modified (and patented) seeds from litigious corporations, to trailer parks where the undocumented immigrants who work at meat-packing plants are rousted by immigration agents, to the halls of Congress, where a woman wages a campaign for stricter food inspections in the wake of the death of her young son, who ate contaminated ground beef.

The film makes its points in several ways. There are disturbing images of the production -- the only word for it -- of cattle and chickens in deplorable conditions and the industrial treatment of meat with ammonia and chlorine to fight the bacteria that results from these breeding practices. There are attacks on the influence of corporate interests on farm/food policy. There are also sentimental tugs on the heartstrings which rather overload an already loaded deck.

Kenner mounts it all with a pleasingly fluent and varied style, which makes it more or less easy to absorb his arguments, even if they're familiar from other books and movies and are presented with unopposed certainty. Indeed, the closing credits are a zealous call to consumer action. Probably, though, by then you'll already have been convinced in your heart of hearts that Mike and Ike are truly not your friends.