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Mykell Sky Arviso-Yazza

Julia Wylie

04/20/20

Nutrition Perspectives (​Food, Inc.)​

Food, Inc.​ is a 2008 food documentary that was directed by Robert Kenner looking into

America's food industries. This documentary goes into depth about the U.S.’s food industries and

corporations to show how much power they have when it comes to our food. We get to look into

the meat industry, the seed industry and the safety and legal aspects as well. From this

documentary, we learn that most of our foods are not sourced humanely and are unsustainable at

the rate that people are growing and the way that we are consuming. We are shown how they

treat their animals, their employees through interviews, and our produce that are sold to us in

supermarkets and by fast food chains. This documentary is very eye opening when it comes to

the food industry and brings to light a lot of issues that most people did not know about.

The reason that I have chosen to write my research paper on this documentary was

because I have always heard so much about it but have never actually sat down to watch it. I

remember when I was in high school, one of our health classes got to watch it but I had a

different teacher who did not have us view the documentary. Everyone would talk about it and

talk about how it opened their eyes to what they are putting into their bodies, they also discussed

how they had so much faith in those big corporations just to find out that they were not very

truthful at all. I had forgotten about this documentary until now and I am so glad that I finally got

to watch it.
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Robert Kenner is an American director who seems to make informative and eye opening

documentaries, but ​Food, Inc.​ is probably the one that he is known most for. In an interview that

he did for the ​Westword​ website he states, “I’m a filmmaker, and I wanted to make an

entertaining film, so this is not my background” and he spoke about how he was just curious

about where our food comes from. I think that it is pretty cool that he was able to make a very

informative documentary about something that he was just curious about and that it was as big of

a success that it was. In 2011, Robert Kenner did an interview that updated people about Kevin’s

Law and discussed the Food Safety Modernization Act, “​giving the FDA power to inspect

high-risk facilities, test for pathogens and order the recall of contaminated food”​ that were bills

passed during Obama’s time as president. It is pretty interesting to see that he is still fighting for

more food laws and doing interviews with updates of issues that were discussed during the

documentary.

This documentary was released on June 9th of 2009, it was very big when it was

released, I still remember when my mom and my aunts would discuss it. It has been 11 years but

I think that it is still relevant for everyone today as it was in the past. This documentary can serve

as a reminder that we need to be more thoughtful about what we are consuming and putting into

our bodies and to be reminded about how our food is sourced. We are still consuming foods from

giant corporations but I think that the knowledge of how organic foods are better for people has

increased since then. The sale of organic foods have increased from $22.5 billion dollars in 2009

to $47.9 billion dollars in 2018, it’s refreshing to see that the sales have gone up over the years.

One thing that I learned about was how the food sales affect immigrants and some

minorities. It was very eye opening to see how some corporations treat their immigrant workers
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and don’t really care a whole awful lot about their safety. It was very shocking to learn that 1 in

2 children who are of minorities will contract early onset diabetes because fast food seems to be

more items for less the price compared to fruits and vegetables. This part reminded me of the $10

food challenge that we had to do. I was able to get some healthy foods but I feel like it was only

enough for me, so to see this family of four only be able to get enough for one person and to

have to try to split it among four people upset me a little bit. It is possible to eat healthy on such

a small income but I did understand their point of quantity vs. quality.

I learned alot from this documentary, from Kevin's Law to the fact that there are giant

corporations mainly running and selling everything in stores that we buy instead of thousands of

little companies. I learned that I need to be more thoughtful and grateful when I purchase locally

grown food or organic food. I think it has made me feel a little bit better when I spend a little

more for the quality of food vs. quantity.

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Citations:

● Food, Inc.​ (2009, June 4.).

● Robert Kenner. (2020, January 12). Retrieved April 20, 2n.d., from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kenner

● Nemkov, T. (2019, January 23). Q & A with Robert Kenner, director of Food Inc.

Retrieved April 20, 2n.d., from

https://www.westword.com/restaurants/q-and-a-with-robert-kenner-director-of-food-inc-

5729762

● Shahbandeh, M. (2019, November 5). Organic food sales in the U.S. 2018. Retrieved

April 20, 2n.d., from

https://www.statista.com/statistics/196952/organic-food-sales-in-the-us-since-2000/

● Pov. (2010, January 21). Film Update: Food, Inc.: POV: PBS. Retrieved April 20, 2n.d.,

from ​http://archive.pov.org/foodinc/film-update/