Fast Foods Film Analysis

I had actually already seen this movie. It was a great companion to Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food: The Dark Side of the American Meal. The director and Sclosser wanted to turn Fast Food into a movie, and I think Food Inc covered much of the same material. With my research into obesity and reading the book nothing in the film was surprising. The film I think served to re-ignite a passion in me that I had lost. The film also put visuals to much of the book, and the visuals are disturbing.
The movie starts with reinforcing that the images of pastoral society that food labels often carry is not reality. I think this traces back to Americans desire to return to agrarian living, just with the perks of industrialized society. Also labels
is dedicated to corn. Thanks to food chemists most food is a rearrangement of corn. These chemists can break corn into maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, di-glycerides, xanthan gum, ascorbic acid, calcium stearate, saccharin, sorbitol, citrus cloud emulsion, fructose, ethyl acetate, citric acid, baking powder, sorbic acid, and vanilla extract. These substances are then used in ketchup, cheese, Twinkies, batteries, peanut butter, Cheez-Its, salad dressing, coke, jelly, sweet & low, syrup, juice, Kool-Aid, charcoal, diapers, Motrin, meat, fast-food to name a few. That’s unbelievable that corn is an ingredient in diapers and batteries. This experimentation of corn resulted from the Farm Bill, which encourages the over-production of corn. We also use corn to feed animals (cows are designed to eat grass), there are even some fish farms teaching fish to eat corn. Mostly the feed is processed through CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). One expert explains that E. coli O157:H7 is a direct result of corn diet, if you feed a cow their natural grass diet for 5 days it would expel 80% of the E. coli from their
Clarence Thomas was a Monsanto lawyer from 1976-1979, then he became a Supreme Court justice and allowed Monsanto to patent the soybean seed. In 1996, Monsanto began selling Roundup ready soybeans. In 1996 about 2% of soybeans in the US where from Monsanto, by 2008 90% of soybeans in the US where Monsanto’s seeds. Monsanto owns these seed which means a farmer cannot clean the seeds to reuse them the next year. The company employs about 75 people to watch farmers to make sure they don’t reuse the seeds. Most farmers who would not be shown on camera likened them to ex-military or ex-police who would follow and intimidate the farmers. One famer interviewed, David does not use Monsanto seeds. He employs Moe Parr, one of the last seed cleaners in Indiana, to clean his own seeds. He still has to be careful what seeds he cleans because his neighboring fields have GMO’s planted and if the wind blows a seed to his field he is still responsible. Monsanto has a black list of people not to sell beans to and both Moe and David are on there. David asked Moe what he is supposed to do after he can’t clean his seeds anymore and can’t buy Monsanto seeds, Moe has no idea. When this film was made the Clinton administration was in office and Monsanto executive served in the administration.
During this film animal cloning became an issue. The producer, Schlosser testified in front of a California council that cloned