This documentary will make you nauseous.
Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo are back with a sequel to the Oscar-nominated, cultural-shifting, Food Inc. This time, with more bad news.
In Food Inc 2, Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser expose how much worse the food industry has gotten since enlightening the world in 2008. Despite a global shift to eat more whole foods, less meat and ultra-processed products, late-stage farma-nomics (farm economics, TM pending) has all but destroyed every aspect of the food chain.
During the pandemic, the United States learned how fragile their food industry had become. Pollan and Schlosser show the viewer how corporate mergers have left farmers and workers desperate and destitute. In every major sector, nearly 80% is run by two or four companies, allowing them to control the market price for consumers and destabilize farmer earnings.
The most disturbing information was how the meat industry was able to skirt COVID-19 regulations to avoid shutting down production. As infuriating as this is, it left me wondering about the alternative option. Due to relaxed anti-trust laws in the last 30 years, the biggest companies have been buying up their competition. As a result, it has left the country dependent on these companies and millions suffered because of it, one factory shutting down led to major food shortages across the US. Learning this made me struggle to know what would have been the right thing to do because ultimately, neither outcome was good.
If the exploitation of farmers and workers isn’t enough to make your stomach turn, learning how these mergers are directly responsible for water droughts definitely will. As uncomfortable as this watch is, it is necessary; it’s so easy to feel as the consumer that we do not play a role in this broken food chain, but we are at the core of it. Perhaps we cannot change much, but being informed is essential to our food health.
Food Inc 2 is in theatre now.
