Documentarian Robert Kenner asks the question any irritatingly fundamentalist vegetarian friend has already asked you at least once – do you know what you're eating? Not so much about the plate of fried sawdust pretending to be a hamburger but a more essential, down-to-earth understanding of what you're eating, and how it got to your plate. What do you know about the corporations who sell it to you, and those who sell it to them, and those who grow it, distribute it and market it? What is corn starch and why is it in everything? Do you really know what you're eating?
There's little about Food Inc. that could be considered subtle, that's not Kenner's style. He sets out to relate in no uncertain terms how inter-connected our lives have become on a handful of corporations. Charged with a profit-focussed failure in their duty of care, he then lets corporations like Monsanto and Wal-Mart off the hook despite clear examples of world's worst practices – cameras are strictly off limits in chicken farms for instance. But if a choice is made to buy a meal grown without nutritional value that, on average, has travelled 2400 kilometres to get to your table, there's no one to blame but yourself. The case Kenner makes for change, one paradoxically involving the Satan of Supermarkets, is riveting.
Food Inc. is a slick production that stands back from the truly stomach churning – the director is more interested in feeding our minds. If you are what you eat (frequently diabetes inducing fructose) then Kenner makes a sound case that we're all in serious trouble. Direct comparisons from food distribution in the US can be made to Australia, given the same practices take place, and the same geographic size applies. And if it's all beginning to sound just a little too green-wing conspiracy for your taste, take a quick look in the cupboard and find out where your food comes from. There's a good chance you'll discover a very inconvenient truth.
// COLIN FRASER
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