"food inc" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• If you recorded PBS' showing of Food, Inc. last night, watch it with the perfect pairing -- popcorn!
• Eat a healthy treat on Earth Day with coconut pineapple loaf cake.
• Don't even think about saving Mother Nature anything on an empty stomach.
• Test your tasty-bits system know-how.
• Take a bite of out a Greek salad on a toothpick.
• Who says you can't drink your Sunday Best?
• Recycle your beef -- Japanese style -- with this tataki recipe.

It's not often that midwestern farmers speak out against a motion picture, but the movie Food Inc. may have hit a bit too close to home. Inspired by the blockbuster books The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation, the movie's criticism -- that industrialized crops are detrimental both to our bodies and the environment -- centers on corn. Hollywood has expressed its de facto support by nominating the film for Best Documentary; now the corn industry is responding. Loudly.

Bob Dickey, a farmer in Laurel, Nebraska, doesn't usually comment on the Academy's voting process, but as the chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, he has something to say. "U.S. corn farmers are proud of their work," he insisted in an official NCGA response to Food Inc. "This film's producers don't like the steps government, the food industry and commodity groups like NCGA have taken to keep food prices low and help feed the world's hungry. We have the least expensive food of any nation, and for that we're grateful."

Foodies will be watching the Oscars closely this year, as Food, Inc., the film that exposes the industrialization of our food industry, is nominated for best documentary. Director Robert Kenner spoke to Slashfood about activism, big brother and whether his phone line is tapped.

Did you ever get depressed when making the movie? The problems you examine seem so intractable.
RK: On some levels. I went out recently with the editor of Rolling Stone, who was the person who initiated the article that would become Fast Food Nation and that article came out in 1997. This all started only ten years ago, when people started thinking about the industrialization of the food system. It's a brand new thing. These things move really quickly and I think as consumers become more and more conscious of that, we will start to shine the spotlight and realize this is a system that's making us sick and we will change it.

Troubled by what he had been reading about his dinner, documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner embarked on a 6-year, cross-country journey to expose the nation's agribusiness industry. "Food, Inc." (see the trailer above) features interviews with authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan and quotes from some of the heads of Big Farming from Walmart to Tyson. Kenner examines recent salmonella scares, chats with organic farmers and calls his film -- which hits the big screen next month -- "entertaining and hard-hitting." We caught up by phone with Kenner in L.A. to chat mutant chicken nuggets, Oprah's legal issues and his quest to leave you "delightfully disturbed."

What made you want to make this film?
We spend less of our paycheck on food now than at any time in our history, which is great, but it also comes at a great cost to us ... I made a film that I hope will leave you delightfully disturbed.

What do you mean by "a great cost to us"?
One out of every three babies born after 2000 will develop early onset diabetes. A lot of that is attributed to corn and corn byproducts. We can't sustain that. There are environmental costs and ultimately it is a cost to the consumer. You might be paying less money, but you are paying additional [health] costs that are becoming very, very expensive.

Men in suits, their strawberries and Oprah after the jump.

As a documentary lover, I am so excited about two food documentaries coming out this fall. Both Flow and Food, Inc. deal with the way two basic necessities, water and food, are handled by big industry.

Food, Inc. sets out to expose the truth about the food industry. Most of it will probably be familiar to anyone who's read anything by Michael Pollan, who is featured in the film. The film delves into who makes food, how it's made, and what the consequences are to various groups of people. Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), Gary Hirschberg (the head of Stonyfield Farms), and Joe Salatin (the head of Polyface Farms) are also featured.

Flow looks into similar issues with water. I heard about this the other day on Bob Edwards' Weekend on NPR, and saw that it is opening in a few weeks at my local art cinema. It is about issues surrounding water and whether it should be a public asset or privately controlled. Flow also delves into what is in our water, what is in the bottled water, and what local communities are doing to take back their water supply.

[via Serious Eats and Bob Edwards]