Food Inc.

[Gonad the Barbarian]

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals

That rambling diatribe does nothing to address what's really the main point of the "agri-intellectuals," how we've traded nutrition for efficiency and profit so much in our food supply that all this cheap ubiquitous food is now directly sickening and killing people.

 

[TehMac]

What's scarier is that there's this thing called the government, and it's trying to get involved with your daily life. Unlike several corporations, the government has no competition and has no desire or obligation to control your life in a quality fashion.

You should be more concerned about that as a voting citizen than some contrivance cooked up by a leftist fear mongerer. You wonder why people can eat so well in the U.S.? Because the food's fucking cheap. Who provides the cheap food? Several large companies.
Don't like their quality? Buy from farmer's market. If it's too expensive, reevaluate your budget, but quit pretending like the world owes you a damn favor when people are starving in some parts of the world because they don't have a supermarket to go to that's powered by one of these "evil corporations."

The straw men constructed by the Leftist media really are quite pathetic. But don't ever expect them to make a documentary about how inefficient, corrupt, and intrusive the government is. Nope, that's not "brave enough."

 

[SlitheryDee]

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals

That's an excellent article. I always try to temper the indignation I feel when I watch an inflammatory documentary by considering the near certainty that they are leaving out a large part of the picture and may not know what the fuck they are talking about in part they do address. That article is essentially a slam dunk refutation of most of the gripes I've heard regarding agriculture.

People should always stop to think about whether they are forming an opinion based on nothing but the not-necessarily-informed opinions of article and book writers and slanted documentaries rather than real facts. They need to think about where the changes they are demanding based on these uninformed opinions would really lead.

 

[scott916]

I buy as much food locally as I possibly can. What I can, I get from the farmer's market, usually at much lower prices than any of the same products at stores (especially fruit, tomatoes and greens) and much higher quality. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by farming areas, I can imagine it's not as cheap in other areas of the country.

I think the thing that scared me the most about that flick was Monsanto's policy of allowing its crops to pollinate farmers for miles around and suing them for illegally using their 'property'.

 

[evident]

You absolutely can do something about it. Buy less processed foods and go with locally grown fruits and vegetables and naturally raised meats whenever possible.

it's easy for us to do since we post on anandtech so we have supermodel wives and make over $1 million a year. in fact theres pretty much no excuse for people who can afford it to not eat healthy. how about people who are barely able to feed their family?

 

[JulesMaximus]

What's scarier is that there's this thing called the government, and it's trying to get involved with your daily life. Unlike several corporations, the government has no competition and has no desire or obligation to control your life in a quality fashion.

You should be more concerned about that as a voting citizen than some contrivance cooked up by a leftist fear mongerer. You wonder why people can eat so well in the U.S.? Because the food's fucking cheap. Who provides the cheap food? Several large companies.
Don't like their quality? Buy from farmer's market. If it's too expensive, reevaluate your budget, but quit pretending like the world owes you a damn favor when people are starving in some parts of the world because they don't have a supermarket to go to that's powered by one of these "evil corporations."

The straw men constructed by the Leftist media really are quite pathetic. But don't ever expect them to make a documentary about how inefficient, corrupt, and intrusive the government is. Nope, that's not "brave enough."

You really have no idea what you're talking about.

The film's director, Robert Kenner, has denied attacking the current system of producing food, noting in one interview: "All we want is transparency and a good conversation about these things." In the same interview, he went on to say, "...the whole system is made possible by government subsidies to a few huge crops like corn. It's a form of socialism that's making us sick.

I thought it was fairly well balanced actually. The film shows how both the left and the right have allowed this to happen under both the Clinton and the Bush administration. Did you know that the people who run the FDA and USDA were previously lobbyists or worked for the very food corporations they are meant to regulate? If you don't see a problem with that then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[JulesMaximus]

it's easy for us to do since we post on anandtech so we have supermodel wives and make over $1 million a year. in fact theres pretty much no excuse for people who can afford it to not eat healthy. how about people who are barely able to feed their family?

That's part of the problem and the film points that out at many points throughout the movie.

 

[slag]

The sad thing with that is it's already EXORBITANTLY expensive to feed even a family of 4. Toss in "healthy" food and it's the damned price of a mortgage every month.

We try to eat healthy when/where we can. But its nearly economically impossible.

You're doing it wrong.

We spend about $100.00 a week on groceries and we splurge a lot. Family of 5, we eat well, too well. If you watch your budget and buy the right staples, you can eat for around $1-$2 a person for every lunch and dinner, sometimes cheaper.