Food Inc. is a great documentary in achieving it's goal. The goal seems to be to persuade the audience into making changes in their diets so that we may change into a society built on more fundamental food thinking that as a society we have forgotten. Joel Salatin's food thinking may seem primitive, but really he is way ahead of all of America in ways of viewing his food. He stands out to me as the smartest, most influential food expert in the film, not that he is a genius scientist finding new ways to make food cheaper, but ironically in the way that he makes his food the way that was done in the past and should be done still today.
Salatin seems to know more about the industrial food complex that America has in place now then any other expert in the film. With all the information that his father and grandpa passed down to him, and his lack of faith in any form of government, he has developed his own way of thinking about the entire American food system. The way that he looks at food has already had a big influence on my own thinking about food. I started buying organic food only days after watching the food- even though Salatin describes what I bought as organic, compared to his superior "beyond organic" food.
There are so many influential cases in Food Inc. that it's hard to pick from which one had the biggest impact, but the mother that had her son die because of bad food at a Jack-in-the-Box was extremely effective because of how sad it was. Any time that a child dies it is an absolutely devastating thing, but the way that the mother went about his dying was very moving. By enacting a law in his honor and constantly working towards having this situation never happening to others, she has made a huge mark on the American food system and therefor her son has too.
One last situation that I found to be intriguing, sad, and an eye opening experience was with the farmer that was being sued by Monsanto. Getting to hear all of the testimonials from people that lost everything because of Monsanto, it really left a mark. I felt incredibly bad for all of these people because they couldn't do anything about the spread of Monsanto soy beans, but yet they still couldn't get out of being sued. After watching this I felt a deep hate for this huge company- a kind of hate that helped me want to change my own way of food thinking.
Most everything that takes place in this film is influential- film just has a way at getting people on board with it's message. Really there is no better way to influence people because of all of the music, effects, edits, etc. that film can do to add emotion. I have always felt that film is about the most powerful motivational tool that a person can use, and this film just reinforces that way of thinking. There have been so many times when I have been down for the count and a film has changed something big or small in my life and this was just another one that changed something in my life for the better.
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