Food Inc
Food, Inc. is one means by which the American food economic system is analyzed. This documentary film shows how American food economic system follows the idea of capitalism and how it affects the food industry. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market. A free market economy is based on supply and demand with little or no government control. In Food, Inc., it shows a high number of supplies because of the increase in demand. It also shows how the government itself should enforce certain laws to regulate American food system. Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council says in the film, “In a way, we’re not producing chickens, we’re producing food.” Lobb’s statement is in fact very true. Chicken producers are no longer producing chicken but are producing food for the Americans. Because of the high demand in chicken’s white meat, chickens are being raised differently. Chickens are now bigger in size and heavier in weight than it was ten years ago. Since there is a change in how much food the chicken can produce, there has also been a price change in recent years. This is an example of Alfred Marshall’s economic theory. Marshall popularized the use of supply and demand functions as tools of price determination. In Food, Inc., union organizer Eduardo Pena says, “We want to pay the cheapest price for our food. We don’t understand that it comes at a price.” A family who never has time to cook was interviewed in this film. Because they leave their house at 6 in the morning and return 10 at night, they would just go to fast food restaurants and buy most of their meals from there. However, on weekends when they go to the supermarket, they compare the price of the healthy foods and think to themselves “we can get two or more hamburgers with this price”. This shows that people are