Food Inc. documentary – notes

Supermarkets and corn: • Grocery store tomatoes are picked green and then ripened with ethylene gas • Most people have no idea where their food comes from – food industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you are eating because if you did you might not eat it • The average grocery store has 47,000 products which makes it look like there is a large variety of choice – but it is an illusion – there are only a few major companies and a few major crops involved • Much of the processed food is just clever rearrangements of corn (eg. of the additives that are derived from corn: cellulose, saccharin, polydextrose, xanthan gum, maltodextrin, and high fructose corn syrup) • 30% of our land base in the US is used to grow corn because thanks to government policy farmers are paid to overproduce this easy-to-store crop • Farmers are producing so much corn that food scientists had to come up with uses for it – just like some of the additives listed above • Food scientist have also spent a lot of time reengineering our foods – so they last longer on grocery store shelves • 90% of the processed food products in the grocery store contain either a corn or soybean ingredient and most of the time they contain both (so you may be eating less variety than you think) • Animals, like cows and fish are fed with corn – because it is so cheap • Candy, chips and soda are cheaper at the supermarkets because the commodity crops like corn, wheat, and soybeans are heavily subsidized – biggest predictor of obesity is income level • Type 2 diabetes used to only affect adults and now it is affecting children in epidemic proportions • Modern agriculture is all about doing things faster, fatter, bigger and cheaper. No one is thinking about the health of our system • People are so disconnected