Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It [Paperback]

Participant Media (Editor), Karl Weber (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2009

Food, Inc. is guaranteed to shake up our perceptions of what we eat. This powerful documentary deconstructing the corporate food industry in America was hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “more than a terrific movie—it’s an important movie.” Aided by expert commentators such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, the film poses questions such as: Where has my food come from, and who has processed it? What are the giant agribusinesses and what stake do they have in maintaining the status quo of food production and consumption? How can I feed my family healthy foods affordably?

Expanding on the film’s themes, the book Food, Inc. will answer those questions through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers. This book will encourage those inspired by the film to learn more about the issues, and act to change the world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

David Denby, New Yorker
“Those of us who avoid junk food, with many sighs of relief and self-approval, may still be eating junk a good deal of the time. This enraging fact, which will not surprise anyone who has read such muckraking books as Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” (2001) and Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (2006), is one of the discomforting meanings of the powerful new documentary “Food, Inc.,” an angry blast of disgust aimed at the American food industry.”

The American Conservative
“If you care about what you’re eating, you should see the new documentary Food Inc.”

Takepart.com
“Most of you have probably heard about Food, Inc., the movie, but did you also know there’s a companion book to the film? The book explores the challenges raised by the movie in fascinating depth through 13 essays, most of them written especially for this book, and many by experts featured in the film. Highlights include chapters by Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food), Anna Lappe (Hope’s Edge and Grub), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation and film co-producer), Robert Kenner (film director), and a chapter on asking the right questions from Sustainable Table! The book is so popular it’s already in its fourth printing.”

About the Author

Karl Weber is a writer and editor based in New York. He collaborated with Muhammad Yunus on his bestseller Creating a World Without Poverty, edited The Best of I. F. Stone, and, with Andrew W. Savitz, co-authored The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social, and Environmental Success—And How You Can Too.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; First Edition, Media tie-in edition (May 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586486942
• ISBN-13: 978-1586486945
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

257 of 273 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From the front lines of the food wars May 21, 2009

By Dennis Littrell HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This book is a companion piece to the documentary Food Inc. It consists of 25 essays on topics ranging from agribusiness, to so-called "frankenfoods," to pesticides and hormones, to biofuels, to nutrition and global hunger. The essays are written by acknowledged experts including Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (2006) and Michael Pollan, who wrote some of the best books I have read on food, including The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001), The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), and In Defense of Foods: An Eater's Manifesto (2008)--see my reviews at Amazon.

The topics are presented in a fairly balanced way with one essay followed by an essay termed "ANOTHER TAKE." For example Peter Pringle's piece "Food, Science, and the Challenge of World Hunger--Who Will Control the Future?" argues that genetically modified (GM) foods are not as dangerous as some think and they can, with proper precautions taken, help us feed a growing world population. However in the next essay, using the term "genetically engineered" (GE) foods, Ronnie Cummins argues that such foods are dangerous and threaten to take away from local farmers the ability to grow food and give that power solely to agribusiness.

In his essay, "Exploring the Corporate Powers behind the Way We Eat," Robert Kenner recounts his experience making Food Inc. emphasizing how closed and secretive are the big corporations that produce and process our food. They wouldn't let him and his camera crews into their plants and they made the people who would talk to him feel threatened. There was no counter to this, possibly because the agribusiness people wouldn't participate in the book just as they wouldn't cooperate in the making of the film. This is damning.... Secrecy and closed-doors suggest that they have something to hide.

Nonetheless I have mixed feelings. There is no question that in an ideal world we would all have local access to organically grown and minimally processed foods--free range chickens and vegetables grown with natural fertilizers in a sustainable family farm environment where the animals are treated humanely. But we don't. Why? The usual answer is you can't produce food cheaply enough in that manner to feed a world of six and a half billion people. This book in effect argues that you can, and the real reason we don't is that the big corporations have a stranglehold on not just our governments but on the science and logistics required to deliver and present the food including labor, transportation, storage, and the markets. Small and local can't compete.

However, what is hardly mentioned in the book and seems almost taboo to say is that the underlying problem, which is only going to get worse, is the enormous demand for food put on our resources because we have too many people living on this planet. I can see a Wendell Berry kind of agrarian paradise possible after we cut our numbers by perhaps half (more would be better) with a larger percentage of the population choosing to become farmers.

Currently the Slow Foods, sustainable foods, organic foods, and the humane treatment to animals movements are mainly supported by society's well-to-do, its elites educationally and economically. The average person cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods, which is sometimes called "Whole Paycheck." Neither can your average urban or suburban dweller conveniently find his or her way to the local farmer's market, if there is one.

But the main problem in the United States is public ignorance. The average person has little understanding of nutrition and is bombarded by conflicting claims in the literature as the big corporations pay for studies that support their interests. On television and elsewhere there's an endless stream of ads promoting fast and cheap food, adulterated food, and food that entices and seduces with depictions of juicy, fatty, starchy essences. A secondary problem is the loss of the tradition of the home cooked meal. As Joel Salatin writes in his essay "Declare Your Independence": "Learn to Cook Again"(!). Much of the food that is bought at supermarkets and taken home to prepare is of the "throw it in the microwave" variety. With many if not most households having two bread winners or a single parent, who has the time and energy to prepare a complete home-cooked meal?

So ultimately the stranglehold that agribusiness has on our society is the result of an unhealthy lifestyle pursued by most people, a lifestyle that has removed us from the land and thrown us onto the concrete and asphalt jungles of our cities and suburbs, has taught us little to nothing about our real relationship with the natural environment and the foods that have sustained us for thousands of years. Instead we live in ignorance in an artificial and unsustainable world of mass produced, sanitized junk food, force fed to us as if by gigantic steam shovels. Or, to change the image, like our cattle, hogs and chickens we are kept at the trough and stuffed to the gills with an ever flowing stream of denatured concoctions of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, sugars and additives until perhaps someday we'll burst. Obesity and chronic disease reign supreme and all our days we will dwell in the house of the overfed and the under nourished.

I applaud editor Karl Weber and the others who contributed to this excellent book and hope it is widely read. And I wish the producers of the documentary a huge audience. Understanding and education come first. We as a society have to know there is a problem, and if this book and accompanying film reach a large number of people, that will be a giant step in the right direction.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is" Read more ›

83 of 97 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Food Inc. June 20, 2009

By P. Strayer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Just saw the film and ordered book. I don't understand why people think organic is so expensive. It's not the same product as the nonorganic version. Scientifically speaking,. it's a different substance. It has more nutrition in it. And why do people think healthy food takes all this time to prepare? You just eat a peach, not a candy bar. Smart choices don't cost more time - they just require a different mentality than buying into the corporate-controlled marketing mindset. And staying out of the supermarket. You want to talk about spending too much - the supermarket is The Worst Place to go. It's ALL about making you spend money. On soda, on chips. Please also read The End of Overeating by Kessler about hypersaturated foods supermarkets always try to sell you.

And those people featured in the film - the Hispanics who eat at McDonald's? I don't understand why they aren't buying food from the taco truck, like in my neighborhood. Bean burritos are filled with nutrition. And they're cheap.

Nonetheless point made. Why are we paying for corn subsidies that line the pockets of giant agribusiness and THEN we still have to pay AGAIN for diabetics, etc. ...not only do we have the world's most ridiculous healthcare "system", the agribusiness corporate interests have given us the world's most ridiculous food system. Read Exposed and you will see how Europeans haven't bought into this toxic melange in healthcare and in food. It's a wonder we Americans are even living. Wake up America! We've got to act soon. Before we spend ourselves to death treating all the problems the food industry has created and the health insurance industry is only too happy to surgically intervene in. Frankenworld!

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely perfect July 17, 2009

By D. R. Blanco

Format:Paperback

This book is a perfect book for new comers to the food industry as well as a good first-read to those interested in helping with the current food crisis. It covers many different subjects and allows the reader to choose which subjects they would like to further pursue.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST read for every American October 18, 2009

By S. Troup

Format:Paperback

You will be shocked at the effects factory farming is having on the safety of our food. This book is most effective after viewing the film; however, it is an incredible eye-opener. It expands on topics seen in the film like genetic modification of seeds and the ramifications of this process. You will also learn more about the treatment of immigrant workers in this country and will soon understand why no Americans want to do the work. TO add insult to injury you will be blown to frustration over the politics involved. If you eat food and you think you are 100% safe under our food safety policies, you need to see the film and read this book.

47 of 57 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars generally okay but leaves a lot to be desired August 1, 2009

By J. McDonald

Format:Paperback

I must have misunderstood both the format and the purpose of this text when I purchased it. I was under the impression it would be a comprehensive account concerning the development and corporatization of the modern food industry in our country; what I got instead was multiple essays, from various authors, that were both elementary, and on avergae, uninformative.
If you want a very general and basic introduction to current issues, such as pesticide use or factory farming, etc., then this text may be helpful. For those that already have a good understanding concerning what is wrong in the food industry but want to know why and how it came to be, Food Inc. may leave you disappointed.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Companion to a movie about our freedoms as Americans October 13, 2009

By R. A. Barricklow VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Picture a sheppard dog punching out a time clock(our fathers' generation). Now the guard is changing - our generation is going to have the sheep(the people) protected by... wait/he's punching in the time clock/WOW! He's back dating it!!! ...(ZOOM IN)... It's a Wolf in government's clothing.
There are three parts to this superb compilation of writers who are intrinsic/intimate to the inner/outer workings in the incipient indusrialization of our food: Part one/THE FILM, Part two/INSIDE THE FOOD WARS, Part three/WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.
The best way to describe it (other than it digs down into the bare bones of this dirty business) is the way the film maker got involved himself; with the help of Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollen, and many others, as he describes in his chapter: Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way We Eat: The Making of FOOD, INC.
He tells of setting out to make a film about food & then inexplicably, runs into an iron curtain separating him from seeing where the food comes from?. So he decides to: matter-of-fact state when companies(many household names)refuse to let the public know what they are in fact buying.
He finds sickness from contaminated food on the rise, as lobbying power cripple efforts to police the industry/a matter of public safety.
He finds that although the government provides inspectors to protect consumers, their authority is waning as the government gives greater responsibility to self-regulation.
Unfortunately, the film he set out to make is turning into a film about unchecked corporate power. He is fortunate to expose it. Unfortunate, because it is ipso facto.
He finds the "Food Disparagement" laws that are meant to scare the bejeezus out of you.... Oprah Winfrey didn't take this laying down/ but even she had to watch her p's & q's.
Robin Maynard of the U.K. Soil Association points out, the same amount of grain needed to fill a tank of a sports utility vehicle could be used to feed a person for an entire year. This is not fair or a sustainable trade. But according the the U.S. Government there are only two kinds of fair: The State Fair and The County Fair.
There are no high roads to globalization only lower & lower roads leading to rock bottom prices. This situation is not sustainable, nor is it accidental. In large measure, it can be traced back to government policies designed to produce the very system that now distorts agrucultural/production in this country.
Whether simply greed, deregulation, outright theft/fraud/blackmailing by financial institutions of their respective governments, the combined effects of the food & financial crisis will continue to unfold in the coming months and years. The bottom 3 billion poor will take the intial hit as well as the continued extermination of the middle class.
The ethanol boondoggle, stock market/commodities speculation/manipulation lead to the crisis of the global food price peak in June 2008. These high food prices have created tremendous pressures in the lives of the poor, for whom basic food can consume 2/3 of their income.
This book is information rich(some stomachs may be unable to digest) in the topic of food as it plays out in today's battle of good vs evil.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!!! Read more ›