Movie Review: Food, Inc.

Wow. 

That's my one-word review of Food, Inc.  Wow.

If I had as many as three words they'd be:  Oh.  My.  God.

I knew that the Standard American Diet is pretty . . . well . . . sad. Yet this movie opened my eyes to just how far the ripples spread.  It's not just that my food choices affect my own personal health.  There is an interconnected chain of effects that stems from our industrialized model of food production.

Agribusiness is a term that's been used to describe the industrialization of farming.  It involves not only the increasing sale of the farming enterprise, but a serious shift in the process of farming itself.  Traditional farming follows an organic model -- grazing cows, for instance, fertilize the soil where they graze.  This makes that patch of ground ultimately more productive.  And through rotating crops and animals a cycle is developed which nurtures each and every step in the process.

Modern agribusiness, on the other hand, utilizes a factory model -- emphasizing efficiency over effectiveness.  And so we do away with grazing cattle, for instance, because it's far more efficient to pack all of the animals together into giant barns and treat them as cogs in a production line . . . a meat production line.  And since it takes a while for a cow to grow up, it makes sense to feed it a diet that will maximize growth . . . even though it's a diet that isn't natural to the cow.

The consequences of using a factory model are, roughly, two-fold.  On the one hand, more and more animals can be raised more and more quickly, making more product more readily available for lower cost.  As with the machine factory, economies of scale increase production and decrease cost.

On the other hand, imposing a mechanized model onto an organic process leads to unintended consequences.  When animals are housed in such close quarters and are not allowed their natural exercise, they are far more prone to disease.  And so farm animals are routinely immunized and given antibiotics, and these things get into the food chain, and into us, and many scientists think that one of the major causes of the increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria is this routine and overuse of antibiotics in our food supply.

And feeding animals a diet which has been determined to maximize growth, yet which is not their native diet, has had unintended consequences as well.  It has been demonstrated that modern beef is high in Omega 6 but low in Omega 3 fatty acids.  Too much Omega 6 can cause serious health problems, as can too little Omega 3.  Most Americans suffer from both problems.  Yet beef that has been raised using traditional grazing actually has a completely different balance of these two fatty acids and is, instead, a much more healthful choice as a protein source.  Our modern methods of factory farming have actually changed the nutritional composition of the meat being produced!

In Food, Inc. we see just how sick our system is, yet we also hear from people -- like Virginia's own Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms -- who are demonstrating that all is not lost.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Who Gets To Tell The Story? (And who will listen?)

I want to say right off the bat that I have not seen the movie The Impossible.  I have, however, read the review of the film by Lisa Scharzbaum in the December 21st issue of Entertainment Weekly.  And it got me thinking.

The movie -- by screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez, directed by J.A. Bayona -- is based on the true story of a family that was vacationing in Thailand at the time of the 2004 super Tsunami.  The movie is apparently a devesating depiction of the destruction wrought by that event, and a harrowing tale of one family's struggle to survive.

Ms. Scharzbaum makes the following comment toward the end of her review:

"It's worth acknowledging the dismay of some that, in the midst of the suffering by hundreds of native residents we're invited to care about the problems of comfy white visitors.  (More attention is paid to how brown-skinned caregivers treat tourists than to their own wounded and dying.)  But such UNICEF thinking misses the larger, universal story of the kind of superhuman strength that love can inspire."

It's that last sentence that really caught my attention.

Firstly, I'm not entirely sure what the phrase "UNICEF thinking" is supposed to convey.  It seems intended to dismiss such "dismay" as she has just told us is "worthy" of acknowledging.  I can only imagine that by invoking the UN organization dedicated to the betterment of the lives of children around the world that Ms. Schwarzbaum is implying that such a critique could only come from someone with a pollyanish perspective.  Perhaps she thought that "PC" sounded too, well, PC. 

But then she goes on to argue that asking why only the suffering of the white family really deserves our attention is missing the "larger, universal story" that the film is trying to tell.  So here's my question -- why can that story only be told through the eyes of a white family?  Why would not the story of those "brown-skinned caregivers" trying to help the tourists and "their own" families not tell this story as well?  Perhaps, even better?

This question gains even greater urgency in my mind when we add the information that the family in the original, true story upon which the film is based is Spanish.  Ms. Schwarzbaum notes that they were "ethnically morphed into . . . a peaches-and-cream British clan."  So, again, why can only a white family tell this "larger, universal story of the kind of superhuman strength that love can inspire"?

For far too long Western culture has assumed white experience to be normative.  As we have become more aware of our multi-cultural reality this assertion that the mono-culture white experience subsumes everyone else within it has been revealed to be as flawed as the notion that male experience can stand as the universal.  The History Channel's current series Mankind: the story of us all aside, we've realized that "the brotherhood of man" leaves out not only the sisterhood of women but also many transgendered folks who do not see themselves as fitting neatly into either gender polarity.(And really, History Channel, how much more expensive would it have been to add two letter to your title so that you could more accurately advertise Humankind:  the story of us all?)

It may be assumed, as Ms. Schwarzbaum apparently does, that the moviegoing audience would only accept the universalisty of this "larger, universal story" if it is told through the experience of a family that emobided our cultural norms.  But there is a growing population -- including white folk -- who could just as easily see the universality of the struggle of a Black family, or an Asian family, or even the Spanish family who actually underwent it.

In Gassho,

RevWik