So yes, this documentary attacks in various ways, from chicken-raising to government interference with the FDA to the patenting of crops, the ways in which the grotesque corporate food industry is turning America into an idiocracy. I do not particularly like eating food these days. I spend way more money than I should on food, because honestly I do not want to put shredded bits of hundreds of different feces-covered animals compacted into one burger or piece of "chicken." So I am basically a hippie who is revolted by the food industrial complex and EVEN I found this movie insanely annoying and preachy and fact-light and opinion-heavy.

Watching this movie is the equivalent of being beaten by a Pollan book between bites of a tasteless soy product. It has some high points! There is an interesting, if scanty and brief, interview with a chicken-producer who loses her contract with Purdue because she is so grossed out by their practices. It is nice to meet a food safety lady whose son was killed by recalled meat.

And a few people have mentioned what the movie just touches on: that is, that the system of producing cheap food is actually incredibly expensive, when you begin to calculate the subsidized grain industries, the environmental and actual cost of transportation, and, oh right, the fact-or so the film tells us!-that one-third of all children being born today will acquire early onset diabetes. Which, you know: that diabetes shit is expensive.

So basically I would rather have seen a movie about math than this one. And that is sayin' something!

Food Inc. also has a long slavish section devoted to Stonyfield Farm, the makers of bad organic yogurt. Organic milk currently accounts for about 6% of the milk market, and, pretty much, less and less every day as the recession ages on. Still, in 1999, "organic dairy products" were "just 0.3 percent of the $75 billion American dairy market," according to the Times.) Stonyfield Farm, actually, is not always an "organic" company; because "it was difficult to find suppliers and the cost of making organic products was much higher than it is today, the company gave up its organic mission until 1995. Now 85 percent of what Stonyfield produces is organic," the Boston Globe wrote in 2003. "Its main facility is a state-of-the-art industrial plant just off the airport strip in Londonderry, N.H., where it handles milk from other farms. And consider this: Sometime soon a portion of the milk used to make that organic yogurt may be taken from a chemical-free cow in New Zealand, powdered, and then shipped to the U.S.," wrote Business Week in 2006.

So basically Stonyfield Farms was a genius business; and yes, they give to charity, and recycle their little cups. But they aren't really heroes of anything much more than capitalism, especially as they are now "asking" their milk-producing collective to cut back on production this year. It's nice that the organic milk buyers have a big buyer! But their relationship to producers doesn't seem that much different, except in scale, from the way McDonald's bosses around the beef industry. It's weird that them making deals with Wal-Mart is like the "good guys" section of this movie.

Anyway, then on Saturday, I went to the farmer's market and spent all the cash I had on like 1.2 meals. Because I'm basically reaffirmed in my plans to never eat a hamburger again, sure. Gross! And now, I mean that was some tasty stuff from those nice farmers, but now what am I supposed to eat today exactly?

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