Film Analysis: Food Inc.

As a consumer, we feel that when we go to the store, we have freedom to choose what we want to eat. However, that freedom is limited and we do not even realize it. Stores choose what to have in stock and we are persuaded to buy the things they have. Let us go back to where the food we see today started to evolve.

In 2008 “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear” was published in Vanity Fair. Penned by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, this exposition presents acts by Monsanto that may be considered questionable. Acts such as possessing a “shadowy army of private investigators” and the production of “two of the most toxic substances ever known”. The company was established in 1901 as Monsanto Chemical Works.

In “The Pleasure of Eating” Berry suggests people do not take the time to know the facts of what they are eating. People now do not want to take time to cook a meal, but instead want a fast meal to eat quickly in a busy day.(Berry) Not only does this show less appreciation for healthy foods, but it is allowing processed foods to become popular and allowing them to sell more, damaging people's health. And this is exactly what the food industry wants. (E-1)The food industry's main concerns are not the quality of their foods, they do not care about the ways it affects our health, instead they worry about volume and price.(Berry)

The pro-chemical farmer argued chemicals are necessary to control pests and weeds. However, the farmer had an organic section for his own consumption and states he doesn 't like chemicals and “None of us would use them if we had any choice.” (218) He did not eat his own product because he was aware of the number of dangerous chemicals applied. He also mentions an organic farmer.

Joel Salatin, the Polyface Farms owner, has a strong opinion on how necessary it is to have a healthy area for animals to be raised in order for everyone to have food on their tables that was well taken care of. Salatin is arguing the fact that organic animals should be used among all Americans. Within the video, the farm owner uses pathos by stating the fact the chickens never see chlorine on his farm and do not get plump as they do in large factories. Along with that, Joel brought up the fact that the cows are able to graze the farms and fertilize on their own rather than having machine made products. On top of pathos, the speaker uses ethos to catch the audiences attention.

The director’s assertion, in the film, is also that food companies are in control of what goes in our food and how is it produced. The documentary investigates

The three essays assigned this week had several common threads running through them. The strongest core theme is the rapid change in the food cycle in America and the vast changes that have taken place in the way by which we grow, produce, and process the food that average Americans eat. The food we eat now is drastically different from what our grandparents grew up eating and the three essays each examine that in a different way. Another theme is the loss of knowledge by the average consumer about where their food comes from, what it is composed of, and what, if any, danger it might pose to them. “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear” by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele is a harsh look at the realities of food production in a country where large corporations, like Monsanto, have been allowed to exploit laws and loopholes to bend farmers and consumers to their

“Today in the United States, by the simple acts of feeding ourselves, we are unwittingly participating in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings.” Jeremy Seifert certainly knows how to get viewers’ attention, as exemplified by the film blurb describing his 2013 documentary, GMO OMG. The frightening depiction of the food industry is one of many efforts to expose consumers of the twenty-first century to the powerful organizations that profit from national ignorance and lack of critical inquiry and involvement. Seifert effectively harnesses the elements of rhetoric throughout his phenomenal argument against remaining complacent about the food industry’s act of withholding of information about genetically modified organisms from

Michael Pollan’s alternative to Factory farming has given a huge insight into a better ethics on food. In “The Animals: Practicing Complexity” Michael Pollan writes about a polyface farm and how it works. The goal of a polyface farm is to emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhance agriculture. Everything on a polyface farm has the potential to be helpful to something else on the farm. Pollan states “The chicken feed not only feeds the broilers but, transformed into chicken crap, feeds the grass that feeds the cows that, as I was about to see, feeds the pigs and the laying hens” (Pollan 345).

He continues the rest of the chapter talking about how most foods have traces of corn in them, by following the industrial food chain. All foods by the FDA must have their ingredients posted on the wrapper, so buyers know exactly what they are eating. Michael Pollan knows he has to look at the wrapper and see where all those ingredients are from to really see where the food he is about to came from. 2. Pollan describes American farmers today as “the

The qualitative interviews are central to the ethos appeal in this film. Many of these credible individuals are introduced with their full names and the listed affiliations they are involved with. They give us testimonials based on their specific opinions. With great specialists including Michael Pollan, Kirk Smith, and Richard Oppenlander. The filmmakers spoke with a wide range of experts, including environmentalists, farmers, and agriculture specialists.

Throughout American history, it is seen that agriculture is something heavily valued, and yet the current view of agriculture is negative, and this change is all an impact of the media and technology that is available at the fingertips of the American people. Bailey Hoerbert completed a study in 2020 about how agriculture is portrayed and affected by the media. Hoerbert states, ¨Studies have shown that Americans tend to fear food production and production agriculture. This fear stems from not understanding what farmers are doing and why they are doing it¨ (Hoerbert, 2020, para. 1). This clearly demonstrates the issue that agriculture is facing caused by the modern media portraying agriculture in a negative manner, and also it stems from not having the coverage that is deserved.

In the world, there are one billion people undernourished and one and a half billion more people overweight. In this day and age, where food has become a means of profit rather than a means of keeping people thriving and healthy, Raj Patel took it upon himself to explore why our world has become the home of these two opposite extremes: the stuffed and the starved. He does so by travelling the world and investigating the mess that was created by the big men (corporate food companies) when they took power away from the little men (farmers and farm workers) in order to provide for everyone else (the consumers) as conveniently and profitably as possible. In his book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, Patel reveals his findings and tries to reach out to people not just as readers, but also as consumers, in hopes of regaining control over the one thing that has brought us all down: the world food system.

Ethical egoism is a normative theory that states an individual 's actions must be done from the perspective to maximize one’s self-interest. Ethical egoism requires that people give special treatment to themselves, and that they have a duty to serve their self-interest. Ethical egoism holds that a person should act only when the action benefits them, and they should therefore refrain from actions when the act provides no benefits for them. When one action is wrong the opposite of the action would seem to be one that is correct. If helping a person would prevent your own self-interest, this would seem to make it morally permissible for a person to perform harm to others in situations where their self-interest would benefit from the action.

Ethical egoism is a normative theory that states an individual 's actions should be accomplished from the perspective to maximize one’s self-interest. Ethical egoism requires that people give themselves special treatment and that they have a task to fill their self-interest. Ethical egoism says that a person should only act when the action benefits themself, and they should, therefore, avoid actions when the act they are trying to fulfill provides no benefits for the individual. When an action that one performs is wrong it seems the opposite of the action performed would seem to be correct. If helping a person would prevent your own self-interest, this would seem to make it morally permissible for a person to perform harm to others in situations where their self-interest would benefit from the action.