• Now, CNN, New York Times, Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, June 16, 2009 11:01 AM

Robert Kenner, the director on a new documentary about the way food is produced in the U.S., has been a busy man recently. "Now" host David Brancaccio devoted a long segment to him and his doc on Friday; he was on Campbell Brown's CNN show last night. Kenner takes the message of "Fast Food Nation" and "Super Size Me" -- the notion that food engineered for mass consumption may not be all that good for you - and, well, supersizes it.

The synopsis on the "Food Inc." Web site says the movie exposes "the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer" with the complicity of the USDA and FDA. "Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment," it charges. As the New York Times review puts it, "'Food, Inc.' is part of a new generation of food films that drip with politics, not sauces."

Kenner is claiming that representatives of the food companies refused to talk to him because, as he tells Lauren F. Friedman in the Philadelphia Daily News "they don't want you to know what you're eating." If the food industry has a compelling rejoinder, it ought to get it out. This is a story that has legs -- if not at the local cinema (there are no screenings with 15 miles of my metro New York home), then in the mainstream media and blogosphere.

advertisement

advertisement