FOOD INC - the movie

[susumama]

Hi beautiful intelligent MDCers!

I just watched Food Inc the movie and I am in shock. Is it truly an accurate depiction of the food price situation in the US?

We (other countries) always talk scathingly about the American diet, blaming the people themselves for choosing to eat so much junk food. But we are coming from a position of ignorance if this movie is a true depiction of how much the government subsidises meat & dairy in comparison to fruit and veg.

In the movie a low income family goes through a fast food drive-thru and buys 5 beef & cheese burgers, either 3 or 4 chicken burgers, some fries and soft drink and it came to just under $12 ( In Australia that would be a $50-$60 meal). they then went into the supermarket & the little girl wanted some pears so her mum said to weigh them to see how many they would get for a pound. It was only 2 or 3 which made it too expensive for her family of five. The mother asks what the world is coming to when a fat ladden take away meal is less expensive than a head of brocolli.

Is this really the case? Is it just the case in some states? I just found it so shocking. Forget that I'm a vegan, even an omnivore would be aware that meat & dairy should make up a small part of your diet compared to fresh fruit and vegetables - let alone meat and dairy in the guise of fat dripping burgers and fries.

What can be done about this? What is being done? We are killing our next generation. The adults in that family had diabetes and the kids were on their way. When I did my nursing degree 20 yrs ago Type 2 Diabetes was called "Adult Onset Diabetes" because you wouldn't find it in anyone under 40. In less than 2 decades we have totally thrown that criteria out the window because of the tremendous change in our diet.

In Australia we are still very lucky - it is much cheaper for us to eat fruit, veggies and wholegrains than it is to eat junk. (I just looked at the price of meat in some junk mail - because I had no idea of prices because I don't buy meat) Minced beef about $11.99 kilo, fillet steak $32 kilo, lamb chops $22.99 kilo, chicken breast $14.99 kilo.

What scares me most is that if this movie was a true depiction of the food situation in the USA we might be next. The rest of the world tends to run along behind the US adopting all it's policies and lifestyles like sheep. So, please, tell me what your food pricing system is really like.

Thanks! xxx

[limette]

I'm in Canada and I wonder the same thing. A McDonald's meal for 2 adults and 2 kids here rings in about $30. I can make a high end meal for that with dessert, or buy enough fruit to last a week.

[tinuviel_k]

It IS really cheap top buy fast food here in the USA. It's not that everything on the menu is cheap (there are $5+ burgers and stuff), but most of the fast food chains now offer "dollar menus" where you can get burgers, fries, soda, and other cruddy items for one dollar. So yeah, a family of 5 could absolutely drive up, buy their "dinner," and get away with paying less than $15.

The state of food in this country is pretty scary to me. There is, however, a small but growing population that is super conscious of their food, where it comes from, and what it means to eat healthy. Farmers markets are growing, small diversified farms are coming back in certain areas, and "slow food" is becoming popular.
The problem is that this is mostly a middle to upper class privilege to shop and eat this way. For instance, I buy almost all organic natural whole foods. In season I get almost all of my produce at the farmers market, and am happy to pay more than I would at the chain grocery to support my local small farmers and friends.
But I'm not going to lie: even with all the beans, rice, and staples I buy it is NOT cheap to eat this way. But we have the extra income to afford it, and as a mostly SAHM mom (I work part time) I have time enough to spend cooking

But so many do not have any extra money to spend on more expensive food. Many households have two parents that work more than full time (or a single parent that does), making it next to impossible to cook inexpensive and healthy meals from scratch. And when dinner time comes and it is going to cost $15 and two hours to make a meal, or $10 and ten minutes to hit the drive-thru a lot of those tired families are going to choose the drive through.

[katroshka]

I will second everything tinuviel_k said, and add that not only fast food from McDonald's, etc. is cheaper than good food. Most grocery stores, especially those in poor neighborhoods, have vast aisles full of processed foods, frozen pre-made foods, soda and other sugary drinks, but very small produce sections. The produce is very limited, usually the most boring veggies and fruit you can think of, and not very fresh. It is also a lot more expensive than the junk food in the rest of the store.

I am currently taking an Environmental and Preventative health class at university, and we watched a documentary about health disparities (which was all very shocking, even for someone who follows this kind of thing). In part of it, they followed a family of 4, a mother and father, and two teenage children, to the grocery store. The mother picked up a frozen lasagna and said, "I can feed all four of us with this, and it's only $2.50. I can't buy the ingredients to make it myself for twice that amount. A bag of veggies costs the same. I can only afford to feed my family this type of food because our food budget is only $200/ month." I have a family of four, with two elementary aged kids, and we spend about $1000/ month on groceries, and eat out at least once a week. We buy organic, local produce and very little processed foods, what we do buy is organic and healthy. It made me feel very lucky indeed that we can afford to eat well, though we certainly make sacrifices in other departments so we can do so, as we are lower middle class, living in a very expensive town.

We live in a "ghetto" neighborhood, where we bought our first house 2 years ago. There are only a couple of small grocery stores anywhere near us, and they definitely meet the description I gave above. We drive to nicer parts of town to get healthy food. Almost all the restaurants in the neighborhood are fast food places. At least half of the neighborhood kids are fat- not a little pudgy, but fat. Since they are Hispanic and African American, they have about a 1 in 2 chance of developing type II diabetes.

Our school lunches are no better than fast food places. They typically consist of greasy pizza, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, nachos, and the like. The required fruit serving is often met with canned peaches drenched in sugary syrup, and at the school where my mother taught they would sometimes "meet" it with gummy bears containing 10% fruit juice. This in a poverty stricken school where most of the children have metal caps on many if not all of their teeth. Vegetable servings are met pretty much every day by a pile of french fries. They are required to serve milk to every kid (even in largely African-American schools, where up to 80% of the children are lactose intolerant), and most kids choose chocolate milk which contains as much high fructose corn syrup as a can of soda. The milk requirement is entirely due to the huge subsidies we pay to dairy farmers to overproduce milk, which we buy and serve at schools.

My daughters go to a very progressive public school that has tried to change the lunch situation, but has found it to be so far impossible, except that they have stopped serving chocolate milk. It's impossible for a number of reasons:
1. The "kitchen" is not equipped for cooking. It has a couple of warming ovens, designed to warm large trays of the pre-made food that gets delivered by the district daily, but not designed to actually cook food. There are no stoves, and very little prep area, as everything comes in packages, ready to be dumped into the metal serving trays. There are no dishwashers and only one sink, necessitating the use of styrofoam trays and making it difficult to wash even cooking utensils, pots, etc.

2. There are extremely strict, but very strange federal requirements for a "reimbursable" lunch (one that the federal government will pay for). It has been designed not by nutritionists or chefs, but by the agencies that give out the farm subsidies that make corn, soy, and wheat so cheap, and are lobbied heavily by agribusiness and the food industry. These requirements allow some of the idiocies I mentioned above, but makes something like a chicken stir fry with veggies not reimbursable. To see this in action, check out Jamie Oliver's show, Food Revolution, where he tries to redesign a district's lunch program. Be prepared to be amazed and incredibly frustrated watching it.

3. Cost. This is huge. The school has tried to arrange catering with a local restaurant that does a lot of great work with the school (like a free gourmet, healthy cooking class after school for middle-school kids, and sponsoring events promoting healthy eating), which would pretty much just break even for the restaurant, but the cost is still too prohibitive. The school will only get reimbursed for something like $1.68 per lunch, and a decent lunch would cost about $3. For the middle and upper class families this would be ok, but for the lower income kids that qualify for free or reduced price lunch and breakfast, this is not feasible, and there are not enough of the higher income kids that can commit to eating daily lunches to cover the cost of the lower income kids.

So here we are, in one of the richest countries in the world, and we can't feed our kids decent food at our schools. The poor here are getting poorer (as are the middle class), and when people get poorer their health gets worse. We have the worst health disparities in the developed world, and they are getting worse. Food is just one part of this, of course, but as anyone with any sense knows, a good diet is the foundation of a healthy life.

[treeoflife3]

yup, America sucks... we also have commercials telling us that HFCS is TOTALLY okay in moderation... its just like plain sugar! showing kids eating sugary cereals and red punch drinks and popsicles because its totally NOT unhealthy and A Okay.

I'm actually in the process of convincing my husband that we need to give up some things to afford food. He doesn't want to buy a totally healthy menu becaues of the cost. I could easily spend more on food than we do on our monthly house payment and it is only us two and a toddler. He'd prefer we spend only 2-400 dollars on food per month but I can't do that very easily. I don't even buy much meat or dairy. We have pretty much no options though here for CSA/coops and junk though. There is a farmers market but its small and almost every stand has the same couple things depending on whats in season. One time we went and the only thing anyone had was okra. I can only eat so much Okra.

America is where health comes to die.

[abbylotus]

I think the other posters said it very well. I watched Food Inc when it first came out and made drastic changes to our diet. Well maybe not drastic because we weren't eating that poorly to begin with but I did turn a new vegan leaf and my omni family doesn't eat as much meat as before. Unfortunately, now that I'm back in school and not working as much we have to do most of our shopping at a big grocery store and not our local co op. It's terrible we are middle class and can't afford to buy locally produced food. It makes me sad and angry.

[nicolelynn]

I was in Newcastle, Australia for 3 months in 2002. I didn't fully grasp the difference between American and Australian food prices because I lived in a community that purchased/cooked all the food. But I do recall being shocked that a can of whipped cream was $6...when you could get it here for $1.99. I was equally surprised that fruits and veggies did not have the same price difference.

But I never looked at meat prices. Oh my goodness...$11.99/kilo for ground beef? You can get it as cheap as $1.99/lb here! But your beef is non GMO fed, mostly free-range, etc. Interesting, too that we don't pay much more for lamb imported from New Zealand than you guys do, even though it isn't necessarily subsidized. We are so spoiled.

I don't recall the price of McDonald's when I was there even though I did go a few times. I do remember it costing about $10 for a McDonald's meal in Finland. So I am guessing the McDonald's foods outside the US aren't usually imported from the US so are not GMO foods since they are illegal in many places? There is your cost difference. I KNEW it tasted different and better outside the US haha.

I already basically knew how bad the factory farming/subsidized model was here before watching Food, Inc and was into pastured/truly free range animal products. But after watching that, doing more research and listening to how my body feels when eating mostly plant food I consider myself mostly vegan now (very very little animal products). I am not really big on the animal rights thing but I realized it is a human rights issue and is is simply not sustainable for the whole world to eat even "sustainable" meat on a daily basis. 

[nicolelynn]

Oh yeah, and now that I am quitting my job to be a stay at home foster-adoptive Mom it is not a choice anymore. We literally cannot afford sustainable/humane animal products, so mostly vegan it will be.

Thankfully for lower-income families WIC is getting better. You can now get organic soymilk and tofu, bulk dry beans, whole grains and a voucher for fresh produce. Organic is allowed for the produce but at like $6 per month per eligible family member that will get you enough for a few meals maybe. But that is a step up from when all that was offered was non-organic dairy and eggs, tuna packed in GMO-soy broth, subsidized boxed cereals, GMO peanut butter, etc.

[nicky85]

My sister-in-law is from Nicaragua and started eating junk when she moved to California. She now has insulin dependent type II diabetes. In fact, she's so insulin dependent that she is hooked up to a bag of insulin at all times. She was visiting last Christmas and she did nothing but eat junk food. I'm not kidding. Cookies, ice cream, graham crackers, chips, meat, cheese, sugary banana bread, chocolate,etc. It was sickening. She's killing herself. She and my husband's brother eat fast food all.the.time. My FIL is going in next week for a procedure to place a more or less permanent catheter for neurogenic bladder. He is horribly obese and my MIL is very overweight. MIL keeps feeding him and herself lots of meat, cheese, and sugar. They have vegetables and fruit, but most of their diet is processed junk. Sometimes, they have meat three times a day. My in-laws often go out for hamburgers after doctor's appointments. I'm still in complete shock of it after three years. My family eats pretty bad, but fast food was considered a once-in-a-while thing and desserts were a rarity, and when we did get dessert, we were usually only allowed one helping. My husband says that when he was growing up, his family went out to eat at least once a week and his grandparents gave him all the ice cream he could eat. My MIL takes her other grandkids to McDonald's (and other fast food restaurants) every time they visit. (We've made it abundantly clear that this will NOT be the case with our son.)

The sad thing is that even after seeing all the health changes my husband has gone through from eating 60-80% raw vegan, no one in his family wants to change. He is a green smoothie and low-to-no dairy evangelist now and his family won't listen. So, in a nutshell, YES there are people like that out there! I married into a family full of them!

Limette, I had no idea it was that expensive to eat McDonald's in Canada! We never ate McDonald's growing up. When we did visit my dad's relatives in Southern Alberta, we ate at their houses, not at McDonald's, so I had no clue that was the case. This would explain why Canada ranks 8th for life-expectancy by the UN's rankings and the USA ranks 38th!

[SubliminalDarkness]

I would have to say, yes, it's accurate. I watched the movie recently(I'd long since read The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation, books that led to the movie) so I wasn't unaware of the circumstances at all. And to be honest, the prices they showed and the reactions of the people when it came to the foods available and the pricing did not surprise me. 

Like was said, some fast food IS pricey. If you buy some of the 'nicer' meals than yes, the prices sure can add up. But almost all the chains now have combos(sandwich, fries, drink) that are only $2.99. So you could feed a family of four for $12, no problem. Now, to me that IS still expensive, but that's because we eat most of our meals with beans instead of meat, and most of what we eat are the cheaper vegetables based on what's in season and on sale. That takes work to plan for, though, and not everyone has that time, and some people just don't take the time. 

But absolutely, food is expensive. Good, quality food is especially expensive. It's a real shame, and there is no doubt in my mind that it contributes to the obesity/health problems. For me, I could eat a $1 burger and be satiated for a meal, so that could easily be a cheap, fast, easy meal for me. But I don't do it(even though I admit to liking the food) because I don't like what it does to me. 

[nicky85]

Another interesting documentary (though it's kind of slow and not nearly as polished as Food Inc.) is King Corn. The reason that all this fast food is so cheap here in America is because the government gives subsidies for growing GMO corn that is fed to the cattle and chickens and used in HFCS. In King Corn, a couple of recent college grads decide to farm an acre of the GMO corn that is fed to feed lot cattle and goes for making HFCS. When they do the math, they find that after paying for things like pesticides and herbicides and other expenses, the only way to actually make money growing the GMO corn is from government subsidies. Pretty Crazy. If you watch King Corn, make sure to catch bonus features, they are really funny. =)