Food, Inc. could have delivered a reach-for-the-Maalox montage of cows mired in manure, pig carcasses whacked about on conveyor belts and immobilized chickens locked in dark crowded coops to make its point about how mass food production has become such an unhealthy affair.

The film does dish up selected grotesque shots of slabs of beef, downer cows, dead hens and grimy CAFOs. There are a few gasp-aloud moments, such as when chickens are beheaded (inexplicably, the scene is chosen from footage of a sustainable farm operation — to show humane life and death?). But that aside, the beauty of this excellent documentary lies in its restraint. Rather than beating up corporate culprits Smithfield, Cargill and others with the big stick of blood and guts, Food Inc. confidently and methodically peels back the labels on our packaged food wonderland, telling an even-handed tale of relentless corruption and greed.

We begin in la-la land — a chilly grocery aisle where cheap subsidized corn infiltrates everything from mayonnaise to pancake syrup and the eerily perfect vegetables come engineered to survive shipping. The camera flows Lynch-like over beautifully arrayed aisles teeming with seeming variety, except that its an illusion. This bonanza of pre-fab food is composed mainly of subsidized commodities — corn and soybeans — and doused in cheap sweeteners like the high fructose corn syrup. A formula for poor nutrition, and diabetes.

Food, Inc. covers a lot of turf. It shows how we got here (agriculture that once nobly tried to pump up yields turned aggressive and restaurants adopted assembly line production — shout out to Mickey Ds!); how bad it is (cows fattened and sickened on grain that build up E. coli in their guts); how big it is (32,000 hogs killed every day at the world’s largest slaughterhouse in North Carolina), how warped (chickens bred to produce more breast meat pitch forward and can’t walk) and how negligent (as the system has grown, food inspectors have declined five-fold since 1970).

Pathogens, food poisoning victims, ineffective regulators, corrupt Washington influences. It’s all here, a feast of good intentions run amok and bad intentions covered up.

The film is relentless, and fascinating, as long as you’re not planning on dinner afterward. Reviewers have called it “riveting” and “horrifying”, (though I bet after a hiatus they’re still eating hamburger). To those familiar with the issues, it won’t be horrifying so much as a call to action. (You can answer that call on the website.)

Director Robert Kenner spent six years on this film, and it shows. Food, Inc. races back and forth between the producers and the consumers, but remains coherent. We get intimate glimpses of a financially strapped family shopping for groceries only to find that the hamburger is more affordable than the broccoli. There’s a classroom where the majority of kids raise their hands when asked if they have a family member with diabetes. A chicken producer reveals how the animals fare in a typical poultry house, risking her corporate contract (which she later loses). Diana De Gette remembers her toddler son, Kevin, poisoned by a hamburger infected with the E. coli bacteria.

The narrators, journalist and co-producer Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and author Michael Pollan, (Omnivore’s Dilemma), walk us through the complexities but don’t get in the way.

This coming Labor Day Weekend, San Francisco will celebrate the intersection of taste, sustainability and social justice that is the Slow Food movement. Non-profit educational organization Slow Food USA is throwing a four-day party they’re calling Slow Food Nation.

SFN’s Executive Director Anya Fernald hopes the debut event, expected to draw some 50,000 people, will reach out beyond the obvious coalition of foodies, health-nuts and environmentalists to, “build momentum and demand for an American food system that is safer, healthier and more socially just.” Highlights of the festival, which runs Friday through Monday, will include the:

• “Slow Food Rocks” concert, serving up not only Gnarls Barkley and the New Pornographers but gourmet beer and locally-grown and locally-produced food;

• 50,000 square feet of “taste pavilions” for which nationally-recognized regional food experts have hand-picked authentic gastronomic specialities from every state;

• A “Victory Garden” — an ornamental edible garden in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center planted on the same site as 60 years ago during World War II;

• A speaker series featuring Slow Food luminaries like the movement’s founder, Carlo Petrini, Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, author Wendell Berry, and Slow Food Nation founder, chef and slow food activist Alice Waters;

• And for those who can stomach politics along with their pickles and panini, a petition calling for a new food and farm policy for the 21st Century that Slow Food USA and its allies will present to Congress next year.

It’s not surprising that the modern slow food movement was born in Italy, well known for its love of traditional gastronomy and the midday meal. In 1986, Italian journalist and philanthropist Carlo Petrini began to speak out against the industrialization of food. In an effort akin to an ecologist trying to preserve the world’s biodiversity, Petrini wanted to show consumers that fast food was wiping out authentic culinary traditions, and the richness and enjoyment of access to a diverse and unprocessed diet.

Petrini’s Slow Food movement is grounded on the belief that food should be good, clean and fair. His 2007 book, Slow Food Nation, outlines the basic principles behind what he hopes will become a worldwide movement toward a more sustainable, healthy and just way to live, and eat, on planet Earth. Slow Food now has 120,000 members worldwide, with 15,000 of those in Slow Food USA.

In the United States, Michael Pollan’s 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals inspired a national conversation about how our eating choices affect not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains us as well. Pollan’s In Defense of Food, published this year, takes that argument a step further, advocating individual action to re-think the way we buy, prepare and consume food in order to be healthier, take pleasure in what we eat, and bring our own habits back into balance with a planet that needs our stewardship to survive.

Slow Food Nation event director Anya Fernald isn’t looking for overnight converts to the Slow Food way of life. “It’s about everyday little steps people can take,” Fernald said, “like reducing the number of meals we eat in our cars from one in five to one in ten.” And for the other nine meals? “There are ways to eat slow and eat quickly,” she said, pointing out that in California, which the California Department of Food and Agriculture said supplies almost half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, you can make a simple, healthy meal from fresh produce in less than ten minutes.

Fernald points out that fast food is associated with the American work ethic. “Deprioritizing food is considered a value of people who work,” she said. While Slow Food isn’t expecting Americans to adopt the two-hour lunches some workers in Spain take for granted, it does advocate moving your meals out from behind the wheel, your desk or the television and taking time, even ten minutes, to taste, relax and enjoy.

Ferald said Slow Food in the United States is struggling against the perception that it’s a movement for the wealthy, gourmet few. She hopes the Labor Day weekend event will inspire attendees, as well as a larger public, to begin to see eating well and having access to well-grown, unprocessed food as a right, not a choice for the elite few.

“Good food is elite in America, but it doesn’t have to be,” Fernald said.

Which brings us to the obvious question in this era of rising prices for food and fuel: Can Americans really afford to change from fast to slow food?

“Can America afford to eat the way it eats?” Fernald fires back. “We’re on the payment plan with our current system. The logical future of our food system isn’t sustainable. We’re at a moment where we have to make some changes.”

(Photo credits: University of California – Davis; Slow Food USA)

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media