Today In The Kitchen: ‘Food, Inc.’ tracks where food comes from

“Food, Inc.” is a newly released film about the food we eat, by Robert Kenner, with experts such as Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) and Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), among others. It is an investigative journalism piece, important, and disturbing. I present the salient information as I understand it.

The film opens with a shot of a label showing a bucolic farm with red barn - where food used to come from. Not anymore. Food is mass produced by multi-national conglomerates in processing plants, according to the filmmakers. The entire food industry is based on subsidized commodities of corn, soy, and wheat. The government subsidizes farmers to produce these crops at below cost so that big companies can use them to create cheap (and unhealthy) food.

The food industry motto: Faster. Bigger. Cheaper.

The average supermarket carries 47,000 products. There are no longer seasons there, no longer tomatoes - there are ideas of tomatoes, ripened by ethylene gas. There are very few bones in the meat cases. Everything is plastic wrapped, veiled.

How did this happen? It started with the fast food industry, McDonald’s being the first. Not only did it use factory food, but it also initiated factory-type jobs. The result was a demand for uniform, mechanically produced food products, and an unskilled, low-paid work force. The result: cheap food.

This food is artificially inexpensive, however. It does not take into account the cost of fuel for industrial farming, processing, or transportation. It is less expensive than real food. For instance, a burger can be bought for less than a head of broccoli. For low income people, there is little choice.

The products: Sugar. Fat. Salt.

Add to the financial reality the insidious infiltration of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), salt and trans fats into the food chain, and we have a diabetes epidemic. HFCS is in everything from animal (including farmed fish) feed, to diapers. It is disguised in things like ascorbic acid. The pharmaceutical companies that make diabetes medications profit. Some people can’t afford both the meds and good food. So they are stuck in a downward spiral of poor food and disease.

The major food producers in this country have placed their representatives in Congress, on the Supreme Court, and throughout the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and FDA (Food and Drug Administration), effectively self-monitoring their own industries, according to the film. They have fought every consumer attempt at disclosure through labeling. If consumers, or farmers, try to fight the system, they are sued by ranks of corporate attorneys. Even Oprah has been sued for saying something less than complimentary about hamburgers.

For example: 70 percent of processed food contains a genetically modified ingredient, much of which comes from corn and soy. Ninety percent of the soybeans grown in this country are from Monsanto GM (genetically modified) seed. This seed has been developed to resist the toxic herbicide Roundup, so that the fields can be sprayed with the chemical and only the soybean plant will survive. Monsanto is trying to monopolize the soy industry. It does not allow farmers to save seed as has been done throughout history. They must buy it every year. Monsanto retains private investigators to spy, sues farmers who save seed, and shuts down those who try to farm the old way, with non-GM seed.

CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) would break your heart. I cried after seeing how these animals are treated. Chickens have been bred to grow so large and fast that they don’t have the bone structure to support themselves, and they can’t walk. They just fall and die in huge, dark buildings, with not enough room to move around, and never seeing the sun. Cattle stand ankle deep in feces, so crowded that all they can do is tilt their heads up for air. They become deformed and can’t walk. They are pushed with bulldozers to the slaughter building. 400/hour are slaughtered. Hogs are herded onto a platform, then crushed en masse and dropped to the kill floor. 32,000 hogs a day are killed. This is where your Smithfield ham comes from.

The meat processing rooms are contaminated with e. coli. There is urine, blood and feces everywhere. It is in virtually all ground beef. If the cattle were taken off corn and grass fed for the last five days of their lives, 80 percent of e. coli would be eliminated. Why? Because cattle are ruminants, meant to graze. They were not meant to eat corn, which makes them sick, which requires antibiotics, which gets into the food chain and eventually, into us. People die from e. coli. But the FDA no longer has the authority to shut down a contaminated production plant. The FDA cannot protect us. We have to protect ourselves.

What can be done? Roosevelt took on the beef industry. Unions improved things until the fast food industry was born. If customers demand better quality, it will happen. This is a capitalist system, after all. Case in point: Walmart is now stocking organic dairy products, not because they think it’s the right thing to do, but because people are asking for it. The result: the use of artificial growth hormones in milk is decreasing. It’s similar to how the tobacco industry was affected when consumers finally stood up to it.

The average meal travels 1,500 miles to get to the consumer. This is an environmental disaster. What you can do:

Buy local

Buy organic/ask for organic products

Cook at home

Support farmers markets

Implement healthy food programs in schools

Write to your Congressional representatives

Read labels

Go to www.takepart.com for more information

Samaya Jones is a Holistic Nutritional Consultant and Natural Foods Personal Chef, who cooks for you and your guests in your home. She writes for health websites, newspapers, and teaches wine education classes. She can be reached at ncsamayaj@gmail.com.

-- Samaya Jones