boyscausesfamilyfootballfriendsmusicrandomworkwritingMaking Lots of NoiseHomeAbout MeContactRSSYou Are What You Eat — The (No) Meat Experiment Part II15JunFood, Inc. has been in my Netflix queue for months. I finally got to it last Thursday.I expected to be surprised — shocked, even — at the state of our food plants and harvesting practices. Instead, I was outright appalled. And incredibly thankful that I had zero meat in my system, because I really would have thrown up.The general and guiding premise of the documentary (produced and directed by Robert Kenner) is that virtually all of the food we consume is controlled and distributed by a handful of large corporations that are focused solely on making money. (Favorite film stats: In the 1970s, the top five beef packers controlled about 25 percent of the market, and there were thousands of slaughterhouses in the U.S. In 2008, the top five beef packers controlled 80 percent of the market, and there were 13 slaughterhouses in the U.S.) They make LOTS of money, and they will cut whatever corners they can to make more of it, regardless of the nutritional, ethical or environmental consequences. Of course, there are government agencies put in place to protect us and our planet, but to borrow from Skinny Bitch, none of the people running these food companies, nor the organizations supposedly regulating them (USDA and FDA), nor the politicians we elect and they lobby (and it should be pointed out that these are often all the same people) give a shit about your health. They care about money. And, to be fair, a desperate need for money is how many of our food problems started.I won’t dictate the whole film or transcribe the hours of research I’ve  done since watching it, but I have two primary takeaways that I think should be discussed: Beef (aka Corn) and Chicken. (I’m not touching on the treatment of these animals just yet, but we will get there.)BeefInstead of allowing our cattle to graze on grass the way they have for thousands of years, we now feed them corn.Corn, tasty as it is, may be the most vitriolic word in food production. It hinders the environment and the economy, and for the sake of this single issue, it compromises our cows. (Caution: Necessary generalizations ahead.) Corn subsidies — price supports that keep the price of the product below the cost of production — were instituted during the Great Depression (the Ag Act of 1938, to be specific, which also included cotton and wheat) to help farmers stay afloat. Seventy-ish years later, we don’t have nearly the same need for these supports, but they remain intact, meaning that the government — and not the market — controls the demand for corn. The government pays farmers to grow corn, and with no market ceiling, farmers grow as much as they can to get the most money from the government. To keep the subsidies intact (read: prices low), we have had to develop uses for mass quantiti