So, my conundrum is that I had some odd assumptions as to what “The Future of Food” would be about, mainly because it’s a documentary about what’s really behind the foods we eat. I was expecting to see a documentary about food processing and whatnot, but oddly enough what really results from viewing is a documentary about genetic manipulation with food, and the government’s attempts to dominate the farming industry and financially ruin the workers. “The Future of Food” is truly in the spirit of the most recent “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices” and though the title is misleading, it really does explain the potential dangers of genetically altered food, but more importantly the government’s mission to continue doing so, and hide it—and its potential side effects to our bodies–from us, the consumer all in exchange for the almighty dollar.
“Future of Food” really does adequately capture how local and international government has taken hold of farmers and forced them out of business or kept them under restrictions for patenting a specific gene and then taking them in to litigation when they discover it in these poor people’s crops inadvertently. With taking virus’ and splicing them with the vegetable genes, and further stretching the line between nature and science, “Future of Food” shows how the line is become thinner and thinner as the scientific age further evolves, especially under the government’s watch.
And the farmers are naturally powerless to the their connections within the seams of the white house—cue a final shot of George Dubbya which basically conveys in sum what we’ve just seen, and what little hope these farmers have left. Koons’ documentary can be extremely leftist, but it’s basically for the intentions of helping these people and exposing us to what the government doesn’t really want exposed. And the final question remains: how far will they go with genetic manipulation before we need prescriptions to eat an apple? Or a list of side effects with every bag of oranges? The answers are hard to stomach.
