Jonathan Tresidder

October 11, 2020

LBST-2301

Documentary Critique

Food, INC.

The documentary that I have chosen to watch is Food, Inc. This documentary was very

interesting but, it left a nauseating taste in my mouth. There is so much that I did not even know was

going on in the food industry. I am surprised that these big food companies are getting away with any of

these practices. The main purpose of this film was to inform the viewers of where our food actually

comes from in the United States. This documentary can be broken up into three main parts: people’s

health, animals, and crops. Food, Inc. breaks down the basics of this environmental issue of animal

cruelty and its effect on the rest of the world.

The first topic that will be touched on first is animals, mainly chickens and cows. Chickens have

been genetically modified to have larger breasts because us Americans like white meat the most. The

downside of this is that when these chickens get to their adult phases their feet can no longer hold up

their weight. These chickens can only take a step or two and then they collapse to the ground, but there

is something even worse than that. All of these chickens are packed like sardines in their chicken coop,

and they are also walking over each other’s feces and urine. Cows have the same problem to a different

scale. Cows that make milk for us are stuck in a cell where they can not move and the cows that we eat

are all surrounded in piles of feces that never gets picked up. These cows are not even grazing grass

because there is none to eat. These farmers feed them corn because it is cheaper. Cows can not even
digest corn so, a lot of times their stomach gets backed up with a ton of it. None of these animals are

being taken care of humanely at all. In today’s society we are so focused on getting that maximum

product from the cheapest amount of money that we now don’t care about how it is done. Even when

they slaughter these animals, they are covered with so many pollutants that the meat has to be

bleached multiple times to meet the FDA standards. That is absolutely disgusting to think about.

Another point that this documentary brought up was about the health of people. Obesity has a

huge correlation with someone’s income level. A poorer person is a lot more likely to be obese than that

of a rich person. One comment that the documentary made that stuck to me was that a McDonalds

cheeseburger is 99 cents and for that price you cannot even get a head of broccoli. Fattening foods are

cheaper than the healthy alternative and some could say that they taste better too. How can people be

healthier if they can not afford the expensive healthy foods? Families are having to buy these unhealthy

foods because that is all they can afford, and this is leading to a big health problem. In the past, type two

diabetes only affected adults, but today it is affecting kids exponentially. E. Coli is also a big problem that

never existed until we started this new way of meat production. E. Coli even can get into other crops

because of runoff from these meat factories.

Corn and soy are heavily subsidized crops, because of these farmers make way more of these

crops than they should. The reason chips, candy, and other foods like that are so cheap is because they

contain corn and/or soy. So much of those crops are produced that corn and soybeans are very cheap to

buy. In the documentary, a food ,scientist guessed that 90 percent of processed foods at any given

grocery store would contain either corn, soy, or even both. Corn is so cheap that farmers are feeding it

to cows and even fish. None of those animals have the stomach to digest corn but cows and fish are

forced to eat it because it is the only source of food they have. In theory if corn and soy were not

subsidized, other vegetables like broccoli and asparagus could be cheaper for the public.
 The delivery of all this information was spot on. This documentary basically used fear to derive

their argument. There were a lot of negatives that this documentary captured and the only positives

that they showed were cases where farming was done humanely. I would have liked either Tyson or

Purdue to have at least given Food, Inc. a statement because this documentary is so one-sided. If what

Food, Inc. published is 100 percent true, then I completely understand why neither of the big food

corporations said anything about it. This documentary also did a very good job getting credible

information from people from inside of these organizations. This helped them get a lot of close-up

pictures and videos of how our food is grown/raised.

This is a documentary that I personally think everyone must watch because of we want change

more people must know about the truth. What this documentary showed is absolutely disgusting. None

of what was showed in the film should be happening in real life. We are a point in our society where we

should know better. These corporations should not make their consumers pay the price so that Tyson or

Purdue can make a little more money. These greedy corporations must be checked by someone better

than the FDA because if the FDA is letting this happen now, what will happen in the future?