Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2011

Food, Inc.: ©Participant Media

If Super Size Me caused you to give up eating in fast-food joints, this activist documentary may make you give up eating altogether. It’s informative, entertaining and scarier than any horror flick. Did you know that the vast majority of the “choices” we find in our supermarkets are provided by four monstrous agribusiness corporations? (USA; Japan likely no better.) Food Inc. brings to mind one of those cheapie sci-fi films where a compliant future populace obediently consumes tasteless pap, except that the future is now. Or did you know that genetic modifier Monsanto virtually owns the US soybean crop? A crop? (The film will explain.) That’s not right. And it gets worse. The agri-corporate PR people say their incredibly efficient methods of raising chickens or beef cattle are feeding an unprecedented number of people on a per-acre basis. They neglect to add that most of this “food product” (from either inedible corn or mistreated animals) is making us obese, sickening us with e-coli, and simply killing us. Ah, but the corporations’ stock prices are up, so it’s OK. This ambitious yet reasoned case against modern agribusiness is not an easy sit, but it’s essential, so there you are.